Communitas

Inside an outside broadcast with Goffman: Exploring radio personalities' performance and interaction in engaging radio broadcasting

2024-07-28T19:00:35+02:00

Radio stations conduct outside broadcasts to create awareness of their brands, promote their business clients’ interests, invest in their communities, and interact with their listeners. The outside broadcast is considered the most difficult form of radio broadcasting. Yet the experiences radio personalities encounter during outside broadcasts are under-explored in academic literature. This study explored the factors that impact positively and negatively on outside broadcast performance and interaction; and established the interplay between these two concepts. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with eleven radio personalities at a central South African community radio station. The data analysis was driven by theory (Goffman’s dramaturgical model of social interaction) and a thematic content analysis. The findings suggest that outside broadcasts involve four finely tuned components that work in tandem to enable radio personalities to perform and interact in meaningful ways with their respective audiences. These are control of the setting, accessibility to performing zones, teamwork, and creative script. The recommendations for best practice may assist radio stations in connecting more meaningfully with their clients and listeners.

Gen Z and cause marketing – A Q-methodology perspective

2024-09-25T16:17:04+02:00

South African brands use different strategies, such as cause marketing (CM), to establish connections with their stakeholders. In CM, a for-profit organisation supports a non-profit organisation (NPO) through consumers' participation in transactional or non-monetary activities to achieve organisational goals. Q methodology (Q) was used to study how campaign structural elements on Instagram influence Gen Z’s attitudes towards CM in South Africa. A concourse comprising 100 fictitious Instagram posts was developed, drawing inspiration from current global campaigns. The Q-set of 24 (piloted) cards obtained from the concourse were selected using Fisher’s (1960) Balanced Block design. The population sample (P-set) included 12 heterogeneous Gen Z participants and one of the researchers also participated in the study for self-reference purposes. Ken-Q Analysis version (2.0.1) evaluated this study’s findings, and a Q factor analysis was conducted using Centroid extraction accompanied by Varimax rotation, producing three viewpoints. Viewpoint 1: Keep it Practical had six participants who enjoyed trustworthy campaigns that were easy to engage in. Viewpoint 2: Stop Tokenising Causes had three participants who detested brands that inappropriately use charity-linked campaigning to appeal to their consumers for profit-driven reasons. Viewpoint 3: Aesthetics and Accessibility are crucial; four participants focused on CM campaigns' visual appeal

Rethinking communication principles to foster internal communities: A South African retirement village case study

2024-01-25T18:27:23+02:00

Rethinking internal communication from a community perspective has been advocated, but little is available on the communication principles underpinning internal community-building. This qualitative case study of a South African retirement village, where semi-structured interviews with management, as well as focus groups with residents were used to collect data, enabled the inductive identification of four communication principles that foster internal communities within this non-traditional internal context: participation and collaboration, and shared values (both of which were previously identified in the building of communities), and inclusivity and a sense of belonging, and transparency and ethical communication (of which neither was previously linked to internal community-building). These four principles align with the two-way symmetrical communication worldview and the African philosophy of ubuntu; their identification extends the public relations body of knowledge on community building through internal communication in the South African context.

A golf course or grazing land: Using participatory communication as a conflict management tool in community development

2024-07-28T19:14:20+02:00

The question underpinning this study is why the Tyusha (Evelyn Valley) Development Project, a tourism project in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, championed by developers, failed to materialise. The starting point of the research was whether, as the classic view suggests, the failure of the project was due to lack of community involvement. The interviews conducted indicated that participation was not the issue. The community had been consulted and were part of the wider formative discussions. What held the project back was conflict amongst the community (or project) leadership group. Given the economic potential of the project for a poor village like Tyusha, one would have expected greater cooperation between community members. This is especially the case when there is willingness and support from private capital and local government. Through a close reading of participatory development critiques, the article finds that conflict is part and parcel of community development work. With communication breakdowns in mind, which can impede project success, the article concludes that participatory development communication is a good vehicle to carry the dual mandate of community empowerment and mediation of conflict.

Public-private and community collaboration: A stakeholder communication case study of community-based tourism

2024-09-02T12:53:28+02:00

By focusing on the perceptions and experiences of the Batlokoa owner community at the Witsieshoek Mountain Lodge in the Drakensberg, Free State, South Africa, this case study examines the collaboration between tourism companies, communities, and government departments. A stakeholder communication approach is applied within a reverse cultural studies analytical framework. The findings suggest that the lodge was viewed by the Batlokoa owners primarily as a place of employment and secondarily as a place of heritage. The study examines the many hurdles encountered, and how the decaying lodge became financially sustainable. This analysis draws on the case study of internal lodge communication and visioning that was conducted during a refurbishing phase led by a new hotel operator during 2010 to 2011 and which, updated to 2024, reveals clear community benefits and effective stakeholder communication. The lessons learnt from the early case study are contextualized for contemporary relevance.

Empowering local communities: CSR communication strategies and NGO engagement in the Indonesian oil and gas sector

2024-09-07T12:34:03+02:00

The Bojonegoro Regency in Indonesia’s East Java province holds great potential in the oil and gas sector, which is important for supporting the regional economy. This study set out to determine how oil and gas companies communicate corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes to stakeholders by analysing the motives behind involving local NGOs in implementing CSR and comparing communication approaches between the multinational oil company ExxonMobil Cepu Limited and domestic gas company PT Pertamina EP Cepu. Thematic mapping was utilised to visualise the relationships between the main themes constructed from the data. The findings highlight the key role of local NGOs in managing CSR, namely serving as communication channels, empowering beneficiaries, and maintaining a strong performance track record that is closely linked to oil mining locations. NGOs also fulfil a dual role, namely carrying out tasks that may prioritise corporate interests over community welfare, and acting as contractors or project partners for implementing programmes that may differ from their original mission.

#PutSouthAfricansFirst: Exploring how hashtag activism on Black Twitter promotes xenophobia

2024-08-01T16:27:16+02:00

Social media has challenged the idea that mainstream media shapes the public, media, and policy agenda. The fragmentation of audiences and their selective consumption of content has challenged the traditional ideas of agenda-setting theory, as well as highlighted the influence of discourse. Fittingly, principles of the agenda-setting theory and discourse theory apply to this study which seeks to explore which discourse under #PutSouthAfricansFirst sets the public agenda for misperceptions and violence towards black African immigrants in South Africa. The study uses netnography and discourse analysis to assess purposively selected tweets under the #PutSouthAfricansFirst from June 2023 to July 2023, a period prone to xenophobic attacks in South Africa. The results indicated that crime, political rhetoric, strife for jobs, and dehumanisation are pivotal topics of the #PutSouthAfricansFirst xenophobic discourse inundating Black Twitter (X) in South Africa. It is these issues that appear to set the agenda among the public and in the media for negative perceptions and physical violence targeted at black African immigrants.

Media framing of ‘Black tax’ in South Africa AFRICA

2024-08-22T22:57:16+02:00

The study examines the media framing of 'Black Tax', a colloquial concept that describes the financial responsibility young Black South Africans bear in supporting their extended families. Drawing theoretically from the discourses of African communalism and media framing, the study analyses narratives about Black Tax in media texts. Within the intersection and contesting contexts of socio-economic dynamics in South Africa, capitalism and African collectivist culture, the study reveals how the media frame ‘Black Tax’ in selected media texts. There is a dominant frame of ‘Black Tax’ as a financial burden and exploitation for young Black professionals, disregarding African communalism ethos and the generational legacies of poverty and inequality in South Africa.

Global Trends in Climate Communication Research on Print Media

2024-05-11T18:39:03+02:00

This article reports on a bibliometric investigation of peerreviewed research articles on climate change reporting in the press, primarily in newspapers, from January 2013 to December 2023. The results indicate that while there has been a general increase in the amount of climate communication research, it is heavily tilted towards highincome countries in terms of the region of research focus and the host countries of the authors. Moreover, the discipline was found to be restricted in its discussion of public response and the influence of stakeholders in climate conversations. Additionally, the study points to an emerging pattern of interconnectedness between research on communication of global health crises like Covid-19 and climate change. The study highlights an urgent need for diversity in accommodating voices from the Global South for more holistic growth of climate communication.

Appropriation of analytics data in public relations practice in South Africa

2024-12-10T23:57:47+02:00

Advances in technology allow organisations to collect and analyse huge volumes of data from a wide variety of sources. Analytics data (raw data to be analysed) gleaned from internal and external sources is transforming the world of business and also the public relations (PR) profession by informing decision-making. Despite the potential that analytics data holds for PR, few studies have examined how analytics data is being appropriated into PR functions. Premised on the excellence theory of PR, the concept of technological appropriation, and in-depth interviews with purposively selected PR practitioners, this study investigated how PR practitioners in South Africa are harnessing analytics data to enhance decision-making. The findings of the study confirm that PR practitioners are appropriating analytics data to enhance their practice. However, the appropriation of analytics data is still confined to the technical and managerial functions with little evidence suggesting that practitioners are harnessing analytics data to inform the PR strategist function. The findings suggest extending insights gleaned from analytics data to the PR strategist function for the profession to add more value to organisations.

See me and hear me: black South African women using YouTube as a site of belonging and visibility

2024-12-11T00:02:52+02:00

Digital technologies have created opportunities and threats in African feminism and digital scholarship, requiring feminists across the continent to rethink and reimagine their position in the digital sphere. Pre-colonialism African women were respected members of society. However, during slavery, colonialism and apartheid women where marginalised, victimised, and dispossessed socially, politically, and economically, making it difficult for them to be seen or heard. It is for this reason that post-colonial African thought is at the epicentre of foregrounding and reclaiming African intelligentsia. Digital technologies privilege Eurocentric knowledge; inevitably this poses a threat to the African gender transformation movement. African women face challenges such as the digital gender divide, cyber bullying, online violence, harassment, and gender bias datasets. To mitigate this gap, African women are curating transnational, transregional and transdisciplinary content to respond to and prevent all forms of online violence and gender inequality. This study argues that digital technologies can be used as a form of resistance to patriarchal, sexist, racist, classist and misogynistic ideologies about African women by creating feminist-driven podcasts, blogs, YouTube channels, websites and social media sites that work towards realising feminist futures free from violence and socio-political and economic injustices online and offline.

Advertising recall and perceptions of Cartagena as tourist destination: A relational study

2024-12-10T23:42:42+02:00

The city of Cartagena in Colombia is recognised worldwide as a tourist destination with great wealth in terms of historical and cultural heritage. Tourists from all over the world visit the city, and have diverse experiences and opinions about the city. Advertising communication and the media contribute to the positioning of the city-brand with members of the tourist communities, understanding that each of them has different places of origin, varied ages and a different consumption of media. The objective of this study was to investigate the perception that a selected tourist community has about Cartagena as a tourist destination, considering demographic factors and the recall of advertising communication about the city in different media. After analysing the results from a survey of more than 400 tourists during a three-month period in 2023, it is concluded that their perception of the city is structured by a combination of positive and negative opinions. The place of origin, the age range and the various media have different relations with regard to the recall of advertising messages about the city, which encourages the development of tourism promotional strategies based on demographic and psychographic factors.