Browsing by Author "Evans, Martha"

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    Desperately seeking depth: global and local narratives of the South African general elections on television news, 1994 - 2014
    (2018) Jones, Bernadine; Evans, Martha; Chuma, Wallace
    Eric Louw, Jesper Stömbäck, and W. Lance Bennett call the trend in late-20th century political journalism "mediatisation", where the televisualisation of Western elections favours episodic, dramatic, fragmented, and event-driven reporting. This "hype-ocracy" results in narrow and shallow frames that entertain rather than enlighten. This thesis, titled "Desperately Seeking Depth", examines this trend in both international and local news about South African elections. While scholarship of Western elections on TV news is blossoming, analyses of news coverage of South African elections is sparse. There is particularly little analysis of the visual dimensions of TV news coverage, which remains a methodological challenge for media and communication scholars. This thesis draws together a comprehensive analysis of South Africa's general elections on international and local television news over two decades. It develops an innovative, multimodal analysis method dedicated to television news and adds meaningful data to the overall study of South African media and politics, and international communication. It combines analysis of previous studies of each election with the original analysis of over 150 news broadcasts to uncover the news narratives about the South African general elections between 1994 and 2014. This thesis demonstrates the difference between global and local journalism about South African elections. Restricted by mediatised news values that favour episodic reporting, Western journalists present entangled, contradictory narratives over the years. The fixation on 1994's violent-turned-miracle election narrative ignored the complexities of the new democracy, while an increasingly detached approach in covering the 2009 and 2014 ANC victories left journalists perplexed and unable to explore deeper narratives. Meanwhile, South African channels become progressively more hesitant to investigate controversial topics or criticise the ruling party. Avoidance of important issues such as the 1994 election violence, the AIDS crisis in 2004, and Zuma's Nkandla fiasco in 2014 results in narrow reporting that limits the substantive information available during the election periods. All channels to some extent seek narratives that attempt to explain and explore South Africa's complex democracy, but these narratives are often contradictory. The decline in journalists' engagement with political leaders and citizens means that the full picture of the elections is reduced to a few easily digestible frames that confirm neoliberal news values. This thesis offers a new model for the analysis of TV news coverage of elections that can provide the basis for future studies. "Desperately Seeking Depth" ultimately uncovers a picture of news industry that, both locally and globally, works as an echo chamber of sound bites that focused on elite voices.
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    Everyday Entrepreneurs: Documenting African Entrepreneurial Journeys
    (2019) Mukuka, Chisanga; Evans, Martha
    In recent years, stories of African entrepreneurship have become popular online, highlighting the journeys, success and challenges that emerging entrepreneurs experience. However, many of these stories and platforms focus mainly on opportunity entrepreneurs and exclude necessity entrepreneurs who operate medium to small businesses, despite the fact that these entrepreneurs overwhelmingly outnumber their more affluent counterparts. Everyday Entrepreneurs is Media Creative Production undertaken with the aim of beginning to fill this gap by highlighting the narratives of some of the entrepreneurs that we encounter daily. The researcher created a web-based platform to showcase various entrepreneurial journeys. This was done by conducting qualitative interviews with seven small-to-medium business owners operating in Cape Town, South Africa, selected through a purposive sampling process. These interviews informed a series of profiles detailing the experiences of these entrepreneurs. The supporting research, as well as the motivations and experiences of the research are documented in the accompanying reflective essay.
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    Glass Tower
    (2022) Isaacs, Sarah; Evans, Martha
    “Glass Tower” is a story about a growing friendship between Leilah and Frankie, two teenage newcomers to a middleclass government school in Durban, South Africa. It's set in the late 1990's, a period of flux following the country's first democratic election, and it's within this context of social change and discomfort that these two very different outsiders come to grips with their changing bodies and place in the world. Bound together by loneliness, and a joint curiosity in their burgeoning sexuality, Leilah and Frankie come to share their deepest secrets with one another. It's an unveiling that stretches the limits of their friendship and pushes Leilah to discover parts of herself that without Frankie she would have left in the dark. Issues of race and sexual abuse are raised, but it is the affection between these two characters, and the discoveries they make as they learn and teach one another, that drives the story forward.
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    Keeping time
    (2003) Evans, Martha
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    Looking for Thabang: my search for my lost brother
    (2022) Shale, Lehlohonolo; Evans, Martha
    This memoir/dissertation is about the relationship between two brothers growing up in apartheid South Africa during the eighties. Hlonkis wishes for his brother Thabang to live peacefully back home after years in exile. He reminisces about their earlier years in QwaQwa when his brother was playful and full of mischief like any other teenager. But when he comes back home his brother is a total stranger. He does not say much about his time in exile as a freedom fighter. Instead, Thabang hurries back to his birthplace in Thaba Nchu to lay the wreaths on their maternal side which includes a war veteran. Later he moves to Bloemfontein where a reception is held in his honour by the paternal side of the family. Meanwhile, no such event is held in Pimville, Soweto their home. The State charges Thabang criminally. Hlonkis believes the charges are trumped up and decides to go to court to prove it. His brother decides to represent himself at a case which attracts media attention and some protestors. The State convicts his brother and sentences him to time in jail. Whilst in prison, his health deteriorates. Prison is no comfort zone. But Thabang downplays it and hatches a plan to study further. His wish is to compensate for the gap left in his high school studies when he skipped the country to join the liberation army. His deteriorating condition gets in the way of applying for studies. Soon he is released from prison on medical parole. At their home in Pimville Thabang battles with a dreaded disease. The costs of medical attention and his acute state of illness make his recovery near impossible. Hlonkis can only get to internalise the lessons that his brother, on his sick bed, tries to impart. One of them is the spirit of generosity. But will Hlonkis ever find out the truth about his brother?
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    Of sunsets, savages, and soccer framing Africa during the final days of the 2010 FIFA World Cup
    (2012) Jones, Bernadine; Glenn, Ian; Evans, Martha
    Representation is fluid;symbolism changes between eras and between news channels. From the negativity of Afro-pessimism and threatening connotations of tribes and rampant warfare, to the notion of untouched wilderness, abundant natural resources, and financial miracles in recent years, Africa has many representations within the media. Sadly, many Africans argue, Western media practitioners tend to present "fatalistic and selectively crude" (Kromah, 2002) representations of Africa, portraying a large and diverse continent as homogeneous (Hammett, 2010), if they represent African realities at all (Golan, 2008). With the FIFA 2010 World Cup held for the first time on the African continent, the Western media spotlight was fixed firmly on South Africa for over a month of continuous, rolling reporting on Western and non-Western news channels. Did this journalism re-engender old stereotypes, symbolism, and language? This study scrutinises five rolling news channels to analyse that very issue, and adds depth and empirical evidence to an under-researched area.
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    The personal is political: articulating women's citizenship through three African feminist blogs
    (2017) Carelse, Aimee; Evans, Martha
    Mediated public spaces both on and offline privilege the educated male elite, and thus cannot address the specific needs of women (Huyer and Sikoska, 2003:2), or their points of view. This study aimed to explore the extent to which three African feminist blogs realise the democratising potential of the blogosphere as well as the ways in which they articulate the concerns and perspectives of women whose vantage points are often silenced by mainstream discourses of citizenship. As a specifically gendered platform within a feminist public sphere, these blogs offer insight into the fluidity of the private/public dichotomy in online media spaces, and how this determines particular discourses of citizenship both on and offline. Using a qualitative-quantitative content analysis of 45 blog posts across three African feminist blogs (Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, Her Zimbabwe, and MsAfropolitan) during July and August 2016, this study investigated how women's engagement with feminist issues is enabled by alternative online media spaces, and in what ways blogs offer African women a relatively democratic space for sharing and discussion. Through an analysis of blog content, the study revealed that contributors deploy particular communicative strategies such as first-person narration, reflection of personal experience in relation to broader social, economic and political issues, and a confessional intimacy that altogether prioritise women's voices and personal lived realities. The topics discussed in the content of blogs cut across public and private life, testifying to a need to move away from ideological conceptualisations of public engagement that delegitimise women's participation in the public sphere. It also makes a case for the reconsideration of the terms "public" and "politics" and what counts as both in a technologically dynamic society in which marginalised groups are continuing to explore alternative avenues for communication and self-expression.
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    Public crime, private justice : the tale of how one of South Africa’s top private investigators gets impressive results and what lessons the men and women of the public police force and the SAPS as an institution might learn from this
    (2015) Sudheim, Alexander; Evans, Martha
    The role of the police is a fundamental one in any society and in South Africa this role is beset with a unique set of challenges which are organisational, institutional, operational, individual and political in nature. It is these I address by means of examining the South African Police Service from the perspective of the praxis, process, means and methods of a working private investigator in contemporary South Africa. My method in this undertaking is a journalistic one in which I use the narrative techniques of dialogue, description, pacing and reflection to bring to life the stories and characters of police officers; ex-police officers; private investigators; victims of crime and perpetrators of crime in order to bring to light some of the more pressing issues with regard to crime and its prevention in contemporary South African society. This lends drama and suspense to a non-fiction narrative and also involves the reader in such a way that they respond to and engage with the subject matter on a personal level, thereby evoking their own thoughts and feelings on the spectre of crime in South Africa and what the SAPS variously is, isn’t or could be doing about it.
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    The Streetscapes Project : reflective paper
    (2017) Ebrahim, Zakiyah; Evans, Martha
    The Streetscapes Project is a photographic and journalistic documentation of ten street-based people's stories from Cape Town, South Africa. The subjects of the project are employed by Khulisa Social Solutions, a non-profit organisation (NPO) that adopts a systemic approach to breaking the cycle of crime and poverty. Streetscapes falls under two of the NPO's eleven programmes, i.e. the offender rehabilitation & reintegration programme and the diversion programme, and includes five social enterprises with the urban garden project in Roeland Street, Cape Town, being one of it. Through narratives and research this project shows how street-based people are highly motivated to work and rebuild their lives, and that having a job means more than simply earning an income to them – it provides them with self-worth, dignity and a source of hope. Beyond the documentation of their personal stories the project also explores the larger structural and systemic barriers surrounding the broader issue of homelessness in the city, including access to shelter services, among others. Ultimately, this project aims to debunk stereotypes about street-based people and enlighten the public about the challenges they face when living on the streets.
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    Televising truth commissions: the interaction between television, perpetrators, and political transition in South Africa
    (2020) Anderson, Michelle E; Evans, Martha; Field, Sean
    This research explores the portrayals of perpetrators in television broadcast coverage of truth commissions within politically transitioning societies, particularly how these discourses may influence the perceptions and experience of transition out of conflict. It focuses on the narratives constructed around apartheid-era perpetrators who participated in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as shown by the South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC) weekly broadcast, Truth Commission Special Report. It also considers how this informs perpetrators in speaking about their own histories. The SABC broadcasts aired between the 21st of April 1996 and the 29th of March 1998. It acted as a key news source on the workings of the TRC for a large group of citizens. An average of 1.1 to 1.3 million people tuned in each week for the first year, and an average of 510,000 people tuning in during its second year on air.1 The TRC hearings were recorded and filmed, and parts of these recordings were included in the SABC programme, along with further research by Special Report journalists. This included stories from the apartheid era that were not told through the TRC, further interviews with perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and communities, as well as reference to news and legal documents. As SABC describes it, the Truth Commission Special Report series “contributed to the TRC's pursuit of revealing the truth about, and engendering a deeper engagement with, South Africa's past conflicts.”2 The series was hosted and produced by well-known anti-apartheid journalist and Afrikaner Max du Preez, whose own identity became central to the narrative put forth. His team of journalists and producers included other Afrikaners such as his long-time colleague Jacques Pauw, and the young Anneliese Burgess. Otherwise, “his team of journalists varied over the twenty-three months of the series, generally including five and seven people who were racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse.”3 As South Africa transitioned out of the apartheid state, transparency of the transitional mechanisms taking place was essential for the transformation of governance and the appearance of accountability.4 This demand acted as one of the driving forces for the intense media involvement in the country's chief transitional process, namely the TRC. This research hinges on the hypothesis that the media's involvement in the South African transitional process went beyond the provision of transparency and may have influenced people's perceptions and experience within the transition per assertions by scholars such as Parver and Wolf, Fischer, Kent, and Mihr, 5 among others. It uses this as a starting point to then investigate the series' narrative as a source of these perceptions and the subsequent experiences of the subjects. This points not only to outcomes, but also their influencing factors with the intent to suggest recommendations for more intentional media coverage of political transitions, with perpetrators being one facet of such.
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    Transmitting the transition media events and post-apartheid South African national identity
    (2012) Evans, Martha; Glenn, Ian
    Using Dayan and Kat's theory of "media events" - those historic and powerful live broadcasts that mesmerise mass audiences - this thesis assesses the socio-political effect of live broadcasting on South Africa's transition to democracy and the effects of such broadcasts on post-apartheid nationhood. The thesis follows events chronologically and employs a three-part approach: firstly, it looks at the planning behind some of the mass televised events, secondly, it analyses the televisual content of some of the events; and thirdly it assesses public responses to events, as articulated in newspapers at the time.
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    Transmitting the Transition: Media Events and Post-Apartheid South African National Identity
    (2012) Evans, Martha; Glenn, Ian
    South Africa came late to television, and its enjoyment of the medium was diminished by the fact that just as a national television service was acquired, the rest of the world began to shun the country because of apartheid. While the ruling National Party feared the integrative effects of television, they did not foresee the negative impact that exclusion from globally unifying broadcasts would have on political rule. Television helped to facilitate the sporting and cultural bans and played an important, mostly unexamined role in the transition to democracy. While South Africa was barred from participating in some of television's greatest global attractions (including sporting events such as the Olympics and contests such as Miss World), with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison – one of the world's most memorable media events – came a proliferation of large-scale live broadcasts that attracted the gaze and admiration of the rest of the world. At the same time, the country was permitted to return to international competition, and its readmittance played out on television screens across the world. These events were pivotal in shaping and consolidating the country's emerging post-apartheid national identity. Using Dayan and Katz's theory of “media events” – those historic and powerful live broadcasts that mesmerise mass audiences – this thesis assesses the socio-political effect of live broadcasting on South Africa's transition to democracy and the effects of such broadcasts on post-apartheid nationhood. The thesis follows events chronologically and employs a three-part approach: firstly, it looks at the planning behind some of the mass televised events, secondly, it analyses the televisual content of some of the events; and thirdly it assesses public responses to events, as articulated in newspapers at the time. Live broadcasting was used first by the rest of the world as a means of punishing apartheid South Africa and then by the emerging NP–ANC alliance as a means of legitimating the negotiation process. In particular, media events served as a powerful means of securing support for the country's first democratic president, Nelson Mandela. At the same time, the apparent transparency of live broadcasting helped to rejuvenate the poor reputation of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, perceived as a government mouthpiece under apartheid and, like South Africa itself, in need of an image overhaul. The thesis argues that just as print media had a powerful influence on the development of Afrikaner nationalism, so the “liveness” of television helped to consolidate the “newness” of the post-apartheid South African national identity.