Browsing by Author "Glenn, Ian"
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- ItemOpen AccessBumper to bumper: photographing across the class divide in post-apartheid South Africa. A photographic essay and analysis(2012) Culhane, Dylan; Glenn, IanThe eponymous collection of 64 photographs accompanying this text constitutes the creative research component of my M.A. in Media Theory & Practice. I chose to photograph the men (and to a lesser but nonetheless significant degree women) that we see being transported in bakkies and trucks on our roads on a daily basis, compiling a photographic essay engineered to provoke contemplation of current societal discrepancies.
- ItemOpen AccessCall on me : the cell phone : a multi-media tool of communication amongst South African youth and how it can be used to platform youth stories for media and advertising(2007) Griffiths, Claire; Glenn, IanThis media dissertation researches the cell phone's actual and potential role as a multimedia tool of communication amongst South African youth and looks at how it can be used to platform youth stories for media and advertising. The youth's connection to the cell phone has come to mean so much more than its actual technological functions. This media dissertation investigates the cell phone phenomenon amongst the youth of today, by looking at both local and international trends, with a more intimate focus on the current trends amongst the South African youth. It will look at the sociology of the cell phone and the culture surrounding it. It will then consider new technology and how the cell phone's role may also be a tool for leapfrogging in South Africa. It is also important to consider the negative connotations that arise with the cell phone's infiltration amongst the youth.Through analysis of recent research about the cell phone's impact on the youth here and internationally, two opposing media directions are identified: the cell phone as a tool in marketing and advertising; and the cell phone as a tool in investigative journalism. By analyzing two different areas, this media dissertation creates a broad and holistic understanding of the cell phone's potential functions through a strong literature review. Firstly, the cell phone's function in marketing and advertising will be analyzed. This media dissertation will take into account the youth market in South Africa through a case study of one of South Africa's strategic consultancy companies: Instant Grass. Through a close look at the youth market now, it will be possible to create a greater understanding of the current trends and how to capitalize on these trends. In terms of marketing and advertising, this media dissertation then discusses an advertising exercise with a youth group studying Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town. Secondly, the cell phone in terms of media and investigative journalism will be analysed through fieldwork done with etv's 3rd Degree. This media dissertation looks at how the cell phone could be used as a tool for youth stories by looking at the parameters involved in creating investigative stories. This chapter also takes a look at the issue of citizen journalism in the digital publishing world today and the rate at which cell phone technology is spurring this development on.
- ItemOpen AccessCryptic Rhetoric: The ANC and Anti-Americanization(2008) Glenn, IanSouth Africans live in a country that is rich in political contradictions, paradoxes and ambivalences. We have a communist party in government; yet a bitter public service sector strike lasted for almost the whole month of June 2007. Avowed socialists and social democrats, in government with the Communists, have embraced neoliberal economic orthodoxy and the disciplines of the market. A former ANC Communist Party leader and candidate for the ANC chair, Tokyo Sexwale, is a billionaire and took the Donald Trump role in a local version of the television show ‘‘The Apprentice.’’ When a leading media house decided to aim a new publication at Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) shop stewards, it found not only that most of the shop stewards were regular church-goers, but that a sizable number of them were office-bearers in their churches. We have a state broadcasting service that draws almost all of its income from advertizing. And so on.
- ItemOpen AccessAn empirical investigation into the 'piracy' of television series in South Africa(2010) McQueen, Kate; Glenn, IanThe end-user 'piracy' of television series, particularly of those produced by USA television networks such as HBO, NBC, ABC and FOX, is a growing trend in South Africa. This paper aims to identify why South Africans want to view television series this way and contribute to the research recognising it as a significant trend in media consumption. The key questions that are examined in this paper include: Who are these individuals, what is their viewing behaviour and why? This paper thus examines the literature available surrounding the profile, the motivations, and the viewing patterns of these revolutionary series viewers.
- ItemOpen AccessFramed: COP17 on South African television(2013) Meiring, Rouxnette; Glenn, IanThe media have a critical role to play in informing and changing public opinion on climate change, "the defining human development issue of our generation" (United Nations Development Programme for Human Development Report, 2008, 1). Developing countries are most likely to suffer the worst effects of climate change, yet few studies exist on climate change communication in the media in developing countries and in particular in Africa. Studies on climate change communication in the media focus mostly on the print media and on developed countries, yet in Africa, more people consume their news through television or radio. So far, no study has examined television news reports of a United Nations Conference of the Parties in Africa. This study examines the way four South African television news stations (three public and one private) framed climate change news over six weeks: two weeks before, during and after the 17th United Nations Conferences of the Parties in Durban (COP17) South Africa, 2011/11/07 – 2012/01/07. Coding words were used to identify climate change stories in the main newscasts on SABC 1, 2, 3 and e.tv each day. These were transcribed and in the cases of SABC1 and 2 broadcasts translated from three indigenous languages (Afrikaans, isiXhosa and isiZulu) into English. A quantitative, descriptive statistical analysis looked at the occurrence of four primary frames in these climate change stories, using binary coding questions to identify each frame. The results in the binary coding sheets were analysed by using spreadsheets. The coding questions were also used to identify and explore secondary and additional frames, which were then illustrated in graphs. Differences in framing between public and private television were also illustrated in graphs (for example local versus foreign stories, time devoted to stories, depth of stories and occurrence of climate change stories with a human angle). Secondly, a qualitative inductive analysis of text and visual material looked at links between frames (for example the link between extreme weather conditions and human action using cause and impact visuals, as well as the link between news image and source – the framing of the politician, the activist and the scientist.) This section also looked at emotionally anchoring images of hope and guilt and the role of banners, posters and maps in climate change stories on television. Though other studies claim that coverage of the summit was "almost invisible" (Finlay 2012, 16) this study shows very high coverage on especially SABC 1 (isiXhosa and isiZulu). The following hypotheses were confirmed: the political/economic frame will dominate on all stations during COP17 but the ecological frame will be highest on at least some stations in the weeks after COP17. The ethics frame will be dominated by the secondary "Inequality/Justice" frame while the "Religion" frame will be of minimal importance. When activists set the agenda, the motivational frame will hardly feature. Climate change scepticism will receive little attention on South African television. Local (South African and African) stories will be more prominent on public television than on private television.
- ItemOpen AccessIdeological tension in four novels by Saul Bellow(1987) Sacks, June Jocelyn; Glenn, IanThis study examines and evaluates critically four novels by Saul Bellow: Dangling Man, The Victim, Herzog and Mr Sammler's Planet. The emphasis is on the tension between certain aspects of modernity to which many of the characters are attracted, and the latent Jewishness of their creator. Bellow's Jewish heritage suggests alternate ways of being to those advocated by the enlightened thought of liberal Humanism, for example, or by one of its offshoots, Existentialism, or by "wasteland" ideologies. Bellow propounds certain ideas about the purpose of the novel in various articles, and these are discussed briefly in the introduction. His dismissal of the prophets of doom, those thinkers and writers who are pessimistic about the fate of humankind and the continued existence of the novel, is emphatic and certain. His alternative to apocalyptic thinking and writing presents a view both of life and of the role of the novelist in the twentieth century.
- ItemOpen AccessInsuring the African future(2013) Barry, Hanna; Glenn, IanThe African growth story has investors from around the world eyeing opportunities offered up by the continent in the form of new markets, enhanced growth potential and impressive returns. Despite the overwhelmingly positive thrust of this message, it finds itself situated against a backdrop of serious challenges, not only in Africa, but also globally, in the face of increasing financial, political and natural-catastrophe risk. In this world of tremendous risk and tremendous opportunity, the insurance industry can provide post-disaster financing, financial security, institutional investment and innovative risk management strategies to reduce levels of risk on the ground. Launched earlier this year, the Principles for Sustainable Insurance are a framework for embedding environmental, social and governance factors into insurance business and so promoting sustainable development. This creative research project argues that a robust insurance industry promotes economic growth and that the parallel developments, in the story of African growth and the risk management practices of the insurance industry, present a compelling framework for nurtured and sustainable development in Africa.
- ItemOpen AccessNarrative and gender in the novels of Christina Stead(1987) Woodward, Wendy Vilma; Glenn, IanThis dissertation locates Christina Stead as a woman writer, who interrogates, both mimetically and poetically, the ideology of the dominant literary tradition. Because the formal narrative strategies, subtexts, and repressed discourses reveal inscriptions of Christina Stead's gender, the issues of language and power are central. A humanist feminist who anticipates a close bond between reader and text fails to overcome the problem of those narrative modes which alienate the readers of Stead's novels. Only a textual feminist who foregrounds the ideology of form recognizes that Stead's methods are dislocating in order to produce a reader who participates in the narrative process itself. For Stead, both women and men are entrapped within the prison-house of language, which becomes the locus of power struggles. The embedded artworks of four women artists, speak and write against the realism of the dominant discourse in the women's desires to assert their own sexuality, to postpone death, to connect with maternal figures, and to undermine androcentrism. These women, and others in Stead's canon, speak their difference. Male genderlects, however, attest to their dominance, endorsing an ideology of oppression in their competitiveness, their narcissism, and their theorizing. Christina Stead, herself, like the women artists she depicts, uses metaphor variously. She has metaphor convey the sexuality of the female characters and subvert the metaphorical commonplaces of the dominant tradition. Other metaphors reveal transcendent impulses, seemingly at odds with the narratives' usual deterministic ethos. In the plots and their endings Christina Stead also negotiates with the norms of the dominant literature. The formal structures correlate with the patterns of the characters' lives either in Bildungsromanen or in novels of repetition which metonymize deathly compulsions. Thus a reading which foregrounds narrative and gender, particularly in the embedded artworks, genderlects, metaphor, plot and closure, depicts a Christina Stead who has never been comprehended by masculist critics who fail to take cognizance of the woman writer's desires to combat the dominant literary tradition.
- ItemOpen AccessNew masculinities in a vernacular culture : a comparative analysis of two South African men's lifestyle magazines(2008) Viljoen, Estella; Glenn, IanThis thesis chronicles the emergence of men's lifestyle magazines within South Africa between 1997 and 2007. It aims to contextualize the emergence of these magazines within the broader South African context and position each magazine as representing a nuanced masculine ideal to the mainstream male readers. This thesis then offers a critical reading of two more marginal men's lifestyle magazines, namely, MaksiMan (2001-2007) and BLINK (2004-2007).
- ItemOpen AccessOdd number : a reflective essay, on the filmmaker, Marius van Straaten's practice in Odd Number a documentary about Rashaad Adendorf, with a focus on representation(2013) Van Straaten, Marius; Glenn, Ian; Botha, MartinThis paper is a reflective essay supporting the documentary film Odd Number and aims to clarify and create more depth for the reader around the film's successes and failures in representing Rashaad Adendorf. Rashaad was formerly an assassin for a feared gang but is now a redeemed family man. His life is explored through interviews with him, his victims, his family and his enemies. Re-enactments of his most significant life changing events are used to inform the audience. A film representing Rashaad's life inevitably raises questions around representation and the filmmaker's relationship with Rashaad. The essay concludes that a weakness of Odd Number is its lack of self-reflexivity and lack of showing the filmmaker's process and bias. The paper identifies that the key strength of the film is the relationship and friendship between Rashaad and the filmmaker and how that influences the process of making the film. The paper concludes that through Odd Number, Rashaad has claimed agency, not only to rebuild or redeem his own life, but to work to improve the lot of the community. The paper argues that this is the best possible legacy Odd Number could leave. The film and reflective essay demonstrate that the relationship with the subject is of primary importance and that focussing on the process rather than the outcome can result in a more honest, albeit subjective portrayal of a subject from a different race, class and background to the filmmaker. Ideally the paper should be read after having watched, the documentary Odd Number. It is important to note that the author of this paper is also the director of Odd Number. This paper is therefore not an analysis of somebody else's work, but a set of reflections by the director on his own work. The paper therefore communicates in the first person, aswell as the third person from time to time.
- ItemOpen AccessOf sunsets, savages, and soccer framing Africa during the final days of the 2010 FIFA World Cup(2012) Jones, Bernadine; Glenn, Ian; Evans, MarthaRepresentation 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.
- ItemOpen AccessOn (not) teaching journalism: The experience at UCT(Taylor & Francis, 2005) Glenn, IanThe University of Cape Town established a major in Media & Writing in 2002 and a Centre for Film and Media Studies in 2003. Currently the centre takes responsibility for two majors (Film Studies and Media & Writing) and five streams within an undergraduate Film and Media Production Programme: in print production; film and television production; multi-media production; scriptwriting; and radio (from 2005). It also has nominal control of the MFA and the Institute for Film and New Media on the Hiddingh Campus, but this course and institute are under the effective leadership of Drama and Fine Art. The two majors have attracted large numbers of students and both rank among the six largest majors in the Humanities Faculty: we have about 240 students in the third-year media courses and 150 in the third-year film courses. The majors and the programme have attracted significant numbers of high-quality white and black matriculants to UCT, with our students having significantly higher entrance points than the faculty average.1 In addition, the centre has a small but growing number of research postgraduates registered for MAs and PhDs, and runs three postgraduate programmes: one in Film Studies; one in Film Theory and Practice; and an Honours/MA programme in Media Theory and Practice.
- ItemOpen AccessPolitical Communication in Post-Apartheid South Africa(2011) Glenn, Ian; Mattes, RobertAny politically interested foreigner visiting South Africa from the developed world would see and hear much in the country‟s mass communications infrastructure that would appear familiar. Much of this is due to the country‟s colonial legacy, which shaped both the country‟s media and political models. The oldest newspaper, for example, the Cape Times, as well as the state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) overtly modeled themselves, (the latter following input from Lord Reith, head of the BBC), on British originals. In the post-apartheid era, the tabloid The Daily Sun pays tribute, in name if not in substance, to the UK‟s leading tabloid.
- ItemOpen AccessThe post-1990 demise of the alternative press(2006) Opatrny, Lukas; Glenn, Ian; Hadland, AdrianIn this thesis, Lukas Opatrny studies the reasons for and implications of the demise of the South African alternative press, from the 1980s, after the end of apartheid. The concept of this press carried important democratic values, which contributed to media diversity, but when the 1990s ushered in the democratic era, theses 'alternative' ideals were lost along with the whole alternative press sector. ... A close analysis of [the] demise of Grassroots and the survival of the Weekly Mail/Mail & Guardian forms the basis of this study and serves to illuminate the conditions prevalent amongst the other alternative publications, which are examined more briefly.
- ItemOpen AccessSatire and the satirist : a materialist reading of eighteenth-century satire(1997) Garside, Damian John; Glenn, IanThis thesis presents an attempt to engage materialist literary analysis in a serious reconsideration of eighteenth-century satire as satire. In the process I see myself as challenging received notions of how the satire of the period is to be contextualized, as well as the way in which the category 'satire' has been constituted. I do not think it is possible to provide any reading of any satire today without initiating a reappraisal of the very form itself. Here I am attempting to integrate an ancient practice with new methodologies. This would seem to demand a perspective which is opposed to, and involves a critique of, not only the accepted institutional views of satire, but of aspects of the academic literary institution itself. Satire is, I believe, a term or category that should not be historicized and relativized out of existence. It has a significance and importance which is lost in attempts to make it a label of convenience: a convenient name that different literary cultures use to differentiate a particular form from the others available to them. In this thesis I will be focusing predominantly on Swift and Pope, who are not only the great satirists of this crucial period, but who are, arguably, the most subtle (Pope) and the most disturbing (Swift) of satirists who ever wrote.
- ItemOpen AccessThe South African print media, 1994-2004 : an application and critique of comparative media systems theory(2007) Hadland, Adrian; Glenn, IanDaniel C Hallin and Paolo Mancini's Comparing Media Systems (2004) has been hailed as an important contribution to understanding the inter-relationship between the media and political systems. The work was, however, based on a study of 18 stable, mature and highly developed democracies either in Europe or in North America. As an emerging democracy that has recently undergone dramatic change in both its political system and its media, South Africa's inclusion poses particular challenges to Hallin and Mancini's Three Models paradigm. This thesis focuses on the South African print media and tests both the paradigm's theoretical underpinnings as well as its four principle dimensions of analysis: political parallelism, state intervention, development of a mass market and journalistic professionalisation. A range of insights and a number of modifications are proposed. This thesis is based on interviews with South Africa's most senior media executives and editors, a comprehensive study of the relevant literature and 15 years of personal experience as a political analyst, columnist and parliamentary correspondent covering South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. The thesis sheds new light on the functioning and applicability of the Three Models comparative paradigm as well as on the development and future trajectory of South African print media journalism.
- ItemOpen AccessSouth African travel writing and bias(2009) Shaw, Cassandra; Glenn, Ian; Hadland, AdrianThis thesis spotlights the travel and leisure magazine industry within South Africa. It contends that the travel writing genre is susceptible to a number of biases, both past and present, which ultimately affect the way its overall content is produced and presented to the public. This work was substantiated through a set of qualitative interviews with key professionals within the South African travel and leisure magazine industry, as well as through a theme- based content analysis of a number of local travel writing publications. This study adds to a rather extensive line of research written on the topic of travel writing regarding a number of older criticisms of bias including 'othering', escapism, and gendering. However, it also focuses on a number of more modem biases such as direct advertising, advertorial usage, as well as the acceptance of 'freebies' and barter agreements, none of which has been given much attention in previous research. The sheer existence of these and other biases within the modem South African travel and leisure magazine industry exhibits an absolute necessity of examination into such a topic, especially given the importance and overall influence that the travel writing industry has on a country's economic standing and overall image.
- ItemOpen AccessThe space between : discursive constructions of masculinity in contemporary South African men's lifestyle magazines(2007) Knaggs, Angie; Archer, Arlene; Glenn, IanThis thesis considers the constructions of discourses of masculinities by contemporary South African men's lifestyle magazines, and examines the extent to which they are simply mainstream promulgators of 'old school' patriarchy and soft porn, or the ways in which they offer new and complex models of modem masculinity. The thesis further examines whether local men's lifestyle magazines perhaps represent a unique synthesis within masculine discourses? This study explores how a new understanding of the discourses of masculinity can help to explain the commonly held assumption that masculinity is in 'crisis'. The post-structuralist study explores the discourses through textual analysis, employing a social semiotic and Critical Discourse Analysis multimodal approach which links the social with the representational. The study concentrates its analysis on the most prevalent discourses in the text. The research takes the form of the textual analysis of four articles taken from prominent South African men's lifestyle magazines. In response to suggestions that no generalised 'crisis' in masculinity exists because patriarchy is still very much intact, this thesis suggests that appreciating identity as self-reflexive provides a different understanding of the anxiety surrounding contemporary masculinity. Gender as a self-reflexive project allows the self to be constructed from a multitude of resources resulting in the apprehension of choice. This study attempts to show how the discursive space created in the discourses of masculinity in men's magazines provides the reader with an intimate, yet emotionally elusive place where the reader can navigate these ambiguities of contemporary masculinity.
- ItemOpen AccessThat terrible vowel, that I : autobiography and Derek Walcott's Another life(1989) Marks, Susan Jane; Glenn, IanIn this thesis, I approach autobiography in Another Life by exploring the linguistic means Derek Walcott uses to set up subjectivity in the text. In particular, I respond to Emile Benveniste's question: "what does I refer to" by examining the role of the first person pronoun in Another Life. In chapter one, I introduce the problem of "being in the text", attend to comments Walcott has made about the self, review criticism of the poem, raise issues which concern critics of autobiography, outline Benveniste's theory of subjectivity and Philippe Lejeune's observations on the use of the third person in autobiography. A thematic summary of the poem follows in the second chapter. The pronominal structure underlying Walcott's autobiography and the "biography" of a West Indian intelligence is traced in chapter three where I relate Walcott's dual perspective to Benveniste's definitions of discourse and historical narration. In the final chapter, close readings of selected textual extracts demonstrate the complexity of language phenomenalizing the pronoun I in different sequences of the poem. The readings support Benveniste's claim that the I "refers to the act of individual discourse in which it is pronounced" and the post-structuralist notion that the "self" is a linguistic construct. I conclude that Walcott's I assimilates both romantic and post-structuralist properties.
- ItemOpen AccessTransmitting the transition media events and post-apartheid South African national identity(2012) Evans, Martha; Glenn, IanUsing 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.