Suchergebnisse

"The role of digital activism in supplementing, and even supplanting, traditional journalism as Africa's watchdog has been under researched. Akpojivi provides an exhaustive and timely dive into digital activism through meticulously researched case studies in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, and optimistically positions digital activism as one powerful answer to neo-colonialism and poor governance. This is a book that will assist well-reasoned interpretations of online social movements in Africa for years to come." --Prof. Chris Paterson, University of Leeds, UK. This book analyses social movements, digital activism and protest actions in Africa using a de-colonial approach, with selected case studies of #BringBackOurGirls, #OurMumuDonDo, #FeesMustFall, and #OccupyGhana from Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana. This book examines the ideological background of social movements and the broader micro/macro structures that exist within these movements and how these structures shape their engagement with state and non-state actors. The author argues that the ideological orientation of movement founders influenced the broader belief of each movement, which in turn shaped the micro and macro structure and relationships of the movements and their engagement with the state. Furthermore, the author argues that not all movement members aligned with the movement's ideological belief, thus the disconnect and contestation within these movements. This book provides much-needed systematic, critical review and cutting-edge research into the ideology, practices, performance, and trends of social and digital movements in Sub-Saharan African countries. Ufuoma Akpojivi is the Policy, Research and Learning Lead at Advocates for International Development, United Kingdom. Prior to this, he was an Associate Professor at the Media Studies Department, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and a Visiting Professor at the School of Media and Communication, Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria. He has over 16 years of professional, and exceptional teaching and research experience in Media and Communications.

"This ground-breaking volume examines enduring and emerging discourses around communication rights in Africa, arguing that they should be considered an integral component of the human rights discourse in Africa. Drawing on a broad range of case studies across the continent, the volume considers what constitutes communication rights in Africa, who should protect them, against whom and how communication rights relate to broader human rights. While the case studies highlight the variation in communicative rights experiences between countries, they also coalesce around common tropes and practices for the implementation and expression of communication rights. Deploying a variety of innovative theoretical and methodological approaches, the chapters scrutinise different facets of communication rights in the context of both offline and digital communication realities. The contributions provide illuminating accounts on language rights, digital exclusion, digital activism, citizen journalism, media regulation and censorship, protection of intellectual property rights, politics of mobile data and politicisation of social media. This is the first collection to consider communication in Africa using a rights-based lens. The book will appeal to researchers, academics, communication activists, and media practitioners at all levels in the fields of media studies, journalism, human rights, political science, public policy, as well as general readers who are keen to know about the status of communication rights in Africa"--

"This ground-breaking volume examines enduring and emerging discourses around communication rights in Africa, arguing that they should be considered an integral component of the human rights discourse in Africa. Drawing on a broad range of case studies across the continent, the volume considers what constitutes communication rights in Africa, who should protect them, against whom and how communication rights relate to broader human rights. While the case studies highlight the variation in communicative rights experiences between countries, they also coalesce around common tropes and practices for the implementation and expression of communication rights. Deploying a variety of innovative theoretical and methodological approaches, the chapters scrutinise different facets of communication rights in the context of both offline and digital communication realities. The contributions provide illuminating accounts on language rights, digital exclusion, digital activism, citizen journalism, media regulation and censorship, protection of intellectual property rights, politics of mobile data and politicisation of social media. This is the first collection to consider communication in Africa using a rights-based lens. The book will appeal to researchers, academics, communication activists, and media practitioners at all levels in the fields of media studies, journalism, human rights, political science, public policy, as well as general readers who are keen to know about the status of communication rights in Africa"--

Memes are considered a communication tool that allows groups of individuals to form a community and express themselves through three semiotic resources: visuals, text and humour. They provide new references that contribute to the construction of identities. This is especially true within university student communities. In this study, we use two students' meme pages in South Africa, UCT Just Kidding (@uctjustkidding) and Wits Just Kidding (@witsjustkidding), as case studies to investigate how students use memes to highlight their everyday experiences and the values attached to these memes. We also explore how memes portray significant issues affecting students' development and progression within the broader South African higher education institutions. Using semi-structured interviews conducted with 7 meme creators and administrators, textual and visual analysis of 14 memes from both pages and Marx's labour theory of value as a theoretical framework, we argue that students use memes to communicate and raise awareness on salient issues affecting them. We, therefore, underscore memes as a powerful tool for constructing social, political, economic and cultural realities among university students in particular and communities in general.

The ability of the media to function effectively as a fourth estate is hooked firmly on the maximum cooperation it receives from the different entities within society at whose service it operates. Recently, concerns have been raised in Ghana about the spate of assault and intimidation against media practitioners, and this action appears to hinder the independence, growth, and development of the media. Using an inductive approach for qualitative data analysis and drawing on the provocation theory, this study explored the degree of assault and intimidation in Ghana's media environment and found that attacks on the media were traced to three major sources, namely, security agencies, communities/individual citizens, and supporters of political parties. The article further argued that the communication interplay of the aforementioned entities is ideal for a functioning public.

Abstract
In this era of globalization, information accessibility is becoming crucial to empower citizens in their political, economic and sociocultural engagements. In emerging democracies, economic, cultural and political factors have hindered and still hinder the vast majority of the population from inclusion in the media and democratic discourse. Nevertheless, a 'new' phenomenon of media convergence is evolving in emerging democracies like Ghana and Nigeria that appears to provide platforms for wide citizen participation in the political and social discourse. From a phenomenological and exploratory perspective, this paper presents an overview of the media convergence practices in newsrooms in Ghana and Nigeria and their potential impact on the countries' democracy. The article, on the one hand, juxtaposes this new trend against the need for the media to play a crucial role in sustaining and developing democracy in such countries, and on the other hand it opens discussions and research enquiry into the practices and genre underlying such media productions.

This book examines the media reform processes and re-democratization projects of Ghana and Nigeria's emerging democracies. It evaluates and critiques these reform processes, arguing that because of dependency approaches resulting from the transplanting of policy framework from the West into these emerging democracies, the policy goals and objectives of the reforms have not been achieved. Consequently, the inherent socio-cultural, economic and political factors, coupled with the historical antecedents of these countries, have also affected the reform process. Drawing from policy documents, analyses and interviews Ufuoma Akpojivi argues that the lack of citizens' active participation in policy processes has led to neo-liberalization and the continued universalization of Western ideologies such as democracy, media freedom and independence. Akpojivi posits that the recognition of socio-cultural, political and economic factors inherent to these emerging democracies, coupled with the communal participation of citizens, will facilitate true media reform processes and development of these countries. Ufuoma Akpojivi is Senior Lecturer in the Media Studies Department at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His research interests cut across media policy, democratization and new media and citizens' engagement. He is a National Research Foundation (NRF) South Africa rated researcher and a fellow of the African Humanities Program (AHP) of the American Council of Learned Societies

Following the first democratic elections in 1994, the South African government has introduced several laws regulating the country's business environment for the purpose of protecting consumers from unethical business practices. One such law is the Consumer Protection Act (68 of 2008) (CPA). The CPA was implemented for a number of reasons,including to conform to international best practices regarding consumer law, to replace the existing but out-dated laws, and, most importantly, to provide protection to vulnerable consumers who in the past were exposed to unethical business practices as a result of the antecedent of apartheid. Despite the good intentions of the CPA, the law will be of little value to consumers if retailers do not generally know and apply it. Therefore, a study was undertaken to measure the perceived and actual knowledge of the CPA amongst retailers. A self-administered questionnaire was used to measure perceived and actual knowledge of the CPA amongst a sample of 97 small independent retailers located in 10 shopping malls in the Vaal Triangle area of South Africa. The findings indicate that whilst small independent retailers consider themselves well-informed regarding the CPA, their actual knowledge of the Act is lacking. This suggests that a number of small independent retailers in South Africa may be conducting their business in a manner that does not comply with the CPA and, therefore, is not in the best interests of consumers. ; https://www.journals.co.za/content/irmr1/11/2/EJC181705

Following the first democratic elections in 1994, the South African government has introduced several laws regulating the country's business environment for the purpose of protecting consumers from unethical business practices. One such law is the Consumer Protection Act (68 of 2008) (CPA). The CPA was implemented for a number of reasons,including to conform to international best practices regarding consumer law, to replace the existing but out-dated laws, and, most importantly, to provide protection to vulnerable consumers who in the past were exposed to unethical business practices as a result of the antecedent of apartheid. Despite the good intentions of the CPA, the law will be of little value to consumers if retailers do not generally know and apply it. Therefore, a study was undertaken to measure the perceived and actual knowledge of the CPA amongst retailers. A self-administered questionnaire was used to measure perceived and actual knowledge of the CPA amongst a sample of 97 small independent retailers located in 10 shopping malls in the Vaal Triangle area of South Africa. The findings indicate that whilst small independent retailers consider themselves well-informed regarding the CPA, their actual knowledge of the Act is lacking. This suggests that a number of small independent retailers in South Africa may be conducting their business in a manner that does not comply with the CPA and, therefore, is not in the best interests of consumers. ; https://www.journals.co.za/content/irmr1/11/2/EJC181705