Papers by Priscilla A Boshoff
Prof Duncan has outlined the relative merits and demerits of self-regulation, co-regulation and d... more Prof Duncan has outlined the relative merits and demerits of self-regulation, co-regulation and deregulation, with which we are in broad agreement. She has also ably dealt with the three functions of regulatory bodies, namely the setting of ground rules for the industry to ensure best practice; enforcement of these; and adjudication of claims and counter claims re journalistic practice (Duncan 2012, p17). Finally, she has also taken up the issue of the necessity of accepting Third Party Complaints as one of the fundamental mechanisms by which citizens can make complaints on the basis of principle, rather than being personally aggrieved. While we are in broad agreement with her on these issues, we would like to highlight some further points for consideration
EDULEARN proceedings, Jul 1, 2022
Rhodes Journalism Review, Sep 1, 2014
Universities are strange places. People come in as one kind of being, and leave quite different. ... more Universities are strange places. People come in as one kind of being, and leave quite different. They are places of transformation. One way in which they effect this transformation is to challenge our preconceived notions of the world, and our relationship to it. However, at the same time, universities are also places of privilege and so can be conservative - in the sense of conserving and fostering particular interests in their favour.
Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa, Oct 17, 2022
The relationship between a personal identity and the state-issued Identity Document (ID) is the f... more The relationship between a personal identity and the state-issued Identity Document (ID) is the focus of this article, which examines stories published in the "Horror Affairs" column of the popular South African tabloid, the Daily Sun. These highly emotional stories tell of the despair and desperation felt by individuals at the lack of an ID book, which is blamed on the inefficiency of the state Department of Home Affairs. In order to explicate this relationship I make use of Agamben's notion of "bare life" and the camp in conjunction with Lacan's idea of the Symbolic Order to argue that if the Identity Document provides the means by which the individual is made to signify, the lack of an Identity Document threatens to reduce the individual to "bare life". By publishing the stories of those deprived of the visibility that the ID provides, the Daily Sun, I show, directly engages in this exchange, and, in contrast to Home Affairs, bestows its own even stronger gift of identity by the fact of appearance in its pages.
Rhodes Journalism Review, Aug 1, 2002
A few days ago, an interesting article dealing with community development and education came clos... more A few days ago, an interesting article dealing with community development and education came close to being published in a national newspaper. But the editor tossed it back at the surprised journalist, and told him to write it again.
Communicatio, Jul 3, 2021
Abstract Post-apartheid, patriarchal gender relations and the violence they generate continue to ... more Abstract Post-apartheid, patriarchal gender relations and the violence they generate continue to contradict the promise of the Bill of Rights contained in Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, which guarantees women a range of rights. How these contradictions are represented within popular media has implications for the achievement of gender justice, for they offer ways of imagining the forms that such justice might take. One popular local publication is the Daily Sun, a tabloid newspaper. Rather than simply aligning itself with the gender status quo, as tabloids in other spaces are sometimes accused of doing, the Daily Sun attempts both to critique and to form its readers’ social and gender identities as members of “SunLand”, the tabloid's imagined community. Using Connell's constructive model of the gender order, and interpretive methods in line with critical discourse analysis, including lexicalisation and narrative analysis, the author analyses the tabloid's 2011 coverage of women whose non-conforming and resistant femininities challenge patriarchal gender relations in township spaces. The findings suggest that while certain forms of non-compliant femininities are condemned, others are validated and the violent masculinities they resist censored. That non-compliant femininities can be also violent is a troubling feature of SunLand's gender order.
Image & Text
Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its ... more Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its foregrounding of the persistent social injustices engendered by colonialism and slavery (what Aníbal Quijano (2000:533) terms 'coloniality') and black people's struggles to overcome them. As a representational tactic in approaching this theme, the Hollywood blockbuster draws on the imaginings of Afrofuturism, which variously endorses radical or more conciliatory approaches to decoloniality. This southern theoretical approach and the critique of coloniality offered by Afrofuturism frame our exploration of how the film positions the hero, T'Challa and the villain, Erik Killmonger, as embodiments of contrasting approaches to emancipation from colonialism's entrenched legacy. Using a structuralist approach that draws on the narrative models of Tsvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, we analyse the film's approach to decoloniality by examining the rela...
Media and Communication, Mar 23, 2021
Zodwa Wabantu, a South African celebrity recently made popular by the Daily Sun, a local tabloid ... more Zodwa Wabantu, a South African celebrity recently made popular by the Daily Sun, a local tabloid newspaper, is notorious as an older working-class woman who fearlessly challenges social norms of feminine respectability and beauty. Her assertion of sexual autonomy and her forays into self-surveillance and body-modification, mediated by the Daily Sun and other tabloid and social media platforms, could be read as a local iteration of a global postfeminist subjectivity. However, the widespread social opprobrium she faces must be accounted for: Using Connell's model of the gender order together with a coloniality frame, I argue that northern critiques of postfeminism omit to consider the forms of patriarchy established by colonialism in southern locales such as South Africa. The local patriarchal gender order, made visible within the tabloid reportage, provides the context within which the meaning of Zodwa Wabanu's contemporary postfeminist identity is constructed. I examine a range of Zodwa Wabantu's (self)representations in Daily Sun and other digital media in the light of this context, and conclude that a close examination of the local gender order assists in understanding the limits of postfeminism's hegemony.
The essays in this volume reflect a wide-range of issues and concerns related to children’s media... more The essays in this volume reflect a wide-range of issues and concerns related to children’s media culture in Africa. For example, several address the role of entertainment television in Addis Abba, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, and Zambia and in the lives of Muslim children. Other essays introduce us to children-centered media from Ghana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, and the innovative programs of PLAN-International. In addition to entertainment media and children-centered media, media education and digital media literacy are also discussed
Gendering children's lives: TV fiction for South African kid
The International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture
This chapter engages debates concerning the impact of global media on local youth audiences in Af... more This chapter engages debates concerning the impact of global media on local youth audiences in Africa. Recognizing the profound rootedness of media consumption in everyday life, the chapter specifically examines the way selected South African youth audiences, differentially embedded in their particular economic and ideological formations, use local and global media texts as part of their ongoing attempts to make sense of their lives
Prof Duncan has outlined the relative merits and demerits of self-regulation, co-regulation and d... more Prof Duncan has outlined the relative merits and demerits of self-regulation, co-regulation and deregulation, with which we are in broad agreement. She has also ably dealt with the three functions of regulatory bodies, namely the setting of ground rules for the industry to ensure best practice; enforcement of these; and adjudication of claims and counter claims re journalistic practice (Duncan 2012, p17). Finally, she has also taken up the issue of the necessity of accepting Third Party Complaints as one of the fundamental mechanisms by which citizens can make complaints on the basis of principle, rather than being personally aggrieved. While we are in broad agreement with her on these issues, we would like to highlight some further points for consideration
Communicare; Journal for Communication Sciences in Southern Africa, 2016
The relationship between a personal identity and the state-issued Identity Document (ID) is the f... more The relationship between a personal identity and the state-issued Identity Document (ID) is the focus of this article, which examines stories published in the "Horror Affairs" column of the popular South African tabloid, the Daily Sun. These highly emotional stories tell of the despair and desperation felt by individuals at the lack of an ID book, which is blamed on the inefficiency of the state Department of Home Affairs. In order to explicate this relationship I make use of Agamben's notion of "bare life" and the camp in conjunction with Lacan's idea of the Symbolic Order to argue that if the Identity Document provides the means by which the individual is made to signify, the lack of an Identity Document threatens to reduce the individual to "bare life". By publishing the stories of those deprived of the visibility that the ID provides, the Daily Sun, I show, directly engages in this exchange, and, in contrast to Home Affairs, bestows its own ...
Critical Arts, 2016
Abstract Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, we examine the limitations that a j... more Abstract Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, we examine the limitations that a journalism school at a prestigious university faces in making a meaningful contribution to the field within a developing country. In the postapartheid South African media landscape, journalism is under pressure both from global forces and a political imperative to address social justice. Given the heterogeneity of the journalistic field and the fact that what counts as capital in it is contested, the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University attempts to redefine the parameters by inculcating a particular approach to and philosophy of journalism practice. While Rhodes wants to educate excellent (professional) journalists, it is guided by an overt political mission to cultivate a journalism that is not necessarily ‘in sync’ with the wider field. Ironically, most undergraduates come from the economic and cultural elite, with specific intentions to accumulate the capital which Rhodes bestows. Students are confronted with their privilege and with alternative ideas about the purpose of journalism, and are asked to make choices and take up positions. We consider whether this critical praxis approach is able to influence the ‘state of play’ – or the distribution of power – within the field.
African Studies, 2017
ABSTRACT Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Interse... more ABSTRACT Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Intersexions, a popular South African TV series that seeks to change sexual and social behaviours that contribute to the risk of HIV infection. The article considers the ‘edu’ part of this edutainment programme, specifically with the nature of the lessons and with the form of ‘disciplining’ the narratives presuppose for gendered and sexual subjects. Central to this critical and constructivist exploration of the gender relationships that are validated and expurgated are Foucault’s notions of discourse and confession as a technology of self. We argue that the series presents a range of different gendered and sexual subjectivities but implicitly endorses a modern subjectivity and transformation at the level of the individual.
Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 2014
Based on a survey of 4,393 journalism students in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa,... more Based on a survey of 4,393 journalism students in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, this study provides much-needed comparative evidence about students’ motivations for becoming journalists, their future job plans, and expectations. Findings show not only an almost universal decline in students’ desire to work in journalism by the end of their program but also important national differences in terms of the journalistic fields in which they want to work, as well as their job expectations. The results reinforce the need to take into account national contexts when examining journalism education across the globe.
Frontiers in Sociology
Stories about “Ben10” relationships between older women and their younger male lovers appear regu... more Stories about “Ben10” relationships between older women and their younger male lovers appear regularly in the Daily Sun, South Africa’s most popular tabloid newspaper. Daily Sun readers, who are typically township residents, engage vociferously over the rights and wrongs of such relationships on the tabloid’s Facebook page, and alternatively berate or support the older, working class women who feature in them. These women could be understood as “postfeminist” insofar as they are financially independent and sexually autonomous. Their actions echo those of the independent township women in the mid 20th century who, resisting patriarchal apartheid social engineering, brewed beer and rented rooms in order to assert their financial and sexual independence. In both cases, these women’s bold actions confront local hetero-patriarchal norms and call into question an ideal local patriarchal gender order. However, the meanings that are made by the readers of such women in Ben10 relationships t...
Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, we examine the limitations
that a journalism... more Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, we examine the limitations
that a journalism school at a prestigious university faces in making a meaningful
contribution to the field within a developing country. In the postapartheid South
African media landscape, journalism is under pressure both from global forces
and a political imperative to address social justice. Given the heterogeneity of the
journalistic field and the fact that what counts as capital in it is contested, the School
of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University attempts to redefine the
parameters by inculcating a particular approach to and philosophy of journalism
practice. While Rhodes wants to educate excellent (professional) journalists, it is
guided by an overt political mission to cultivate a journalism that is not necessarily
‘in sync’ with the wider field. Ironically, most undergraduates come from the
economic and cultural elite, with specific intentions to accumulate the capital which
Rhodes bestows. Students are confronted with their privilege and with alternative
ideas about the purpose of journalism, and are asked to make choices and take up
positions. We consider whether this critical praxis approach is able to influence the
‘state of play’ – or the distribution of power – within the field.
Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Intersexions, a ... more Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Intersexions, a popular South African TV series that seeks to change sexual and social behaviours that contribute to the risk of HIV infection. The article considers the ‘edu’ part of this edutainment programme, specifically with the nature of the lessons and with the form of ‘disciplining’ the narratives presuppose for gendered and sexual subjects. Central to this critical and constructivist exploration of the gender relationships that are validated and expurgated are Foucault’s notions of discourse and confession as a technology of self. We argue that the series presents a range of different gendered and sexual subjectivities but implicitly endorses a modern subjectivity and transformation at the level of the individual
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Papers by Priscilla A Boshoff
that a journalism school at a prestigious university faces in making a meaningful
contribution to the field within a developing country. In the postapartheid South
African media landscape, journalism is under pressure both from global forces
and a political imperative to address social justice. Given the heterogeneity of the
journalistic field and the fact that what counts as capital in it is contested, the School
of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University attempts to redefine the
parameters by inculcating a particular approach to and philosophy of journalism
practice. While Rhodes wants to educate excellent (professional) journalists, it is
guided by an overt political mission to cultivate a journalism that is not necessarily
‘in sync’ with the wider field. Ironically, most undergraduates come from the
economic and cultural elite, with specific intentions to accumulate the capital which
Rhodes bestows. Students are confronted with their privilege and with alternative
ideas about the purpose of journalism, and are asked to make choices and take up
positions. We consider whether this critical praxis approach is able to influence the
‘state of play’ – or the distribution of power – within the field.
that a journalism school at a prestigious university faces in making a meaningful
contribution to the field within a developing country. In the postapartheid South
African media landscape, journalism is under pressure both from global forces
and a political imperative to address social justice. Given the heterogeneity of the
journalistic field and the fact that what counts as capital in it is contested, the School
of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University attempts to redefine the
parameters by inculcating a particular approach to and philosophy of journalism
practice. While Rhodes wants to educate excellent (professional) journalists, it is
guided by an overt political mission to cultivate a journalism that is not necessarily
‘in sync’ with the wider field. Ironically, most undergraduates come from the
economic and cultural elite, with specific intentions to accumulate the capital which
Rhodes bestows. Students are confronted with their privilege and with alternative
ideas about the purpose of journalism, and are asked to make choices and take up
positions. We consider whether this critical praxis approach is able to influence the
‘state of play’ – or the distribution of power – within the field.