OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Walton, Marion"

Browsing by Author "Walton, Marion"

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Open Access
A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experiences of Social Housing Residents in Relation to their Digital Exclusion
(2018) Williams, Jonathan; Walton, Marion; Nilsson, Warren
There is no more significant threat to a prosperous South Africa than the persistent socioeconomic exclusion and continuous spatial segregation of South African society. Social housing and digital inclusion both play a critical role as inclusionary interventions for the socioeconomic advancement of the previously disenfranchised and the reintegration of apartheid-era segregated communities. Access to ICTs provides marginalised communities with platforms and tools to amplify their voices, gain access to information and reaffirm their citizenship, thereby allowing for more vigorous participation in the national discourse. “The goal of ICTs is not to necessarily solve the digital divide but rather to further the process of social inclusion.” (Warschauer, 2003) Furthermore, these technological platforms provide access to life chances, capital enhancing activities, information and the possibility of building networks outside of individuals’ modest social networks. This study seeks to understand how digital exclusion influences the experience of overall inclusion in South African social housing. This dissertation is a qualitative study employing a mixture of phenomenological and ethnographic methods to document and make sense of the lived experiences of participants in relation to their exclusion. The study uses of semi-structured interviews, focus groups and surveys to explore participants’ adaptation and integration into local formal institutions and the host community of Blue View Terraces, a mostly white, middle-income neighbourhood located in Cape Town. The study discovered the coexistence of many different and competing forms of exclusion. Firstly, a key finding during the process of residential desegregation or spatial inclusion was participants’ pervasive experiences of power dynamics. These power dynamics manifested as discrimination and marginalisation that was partly caused by the absence of relocation support, public awareness programs about social housing and a failure by the social housing institution to adequately address more forms of inclusion than just spatial. Secondly, the findings showed the design of the housing development to be hopelessly inadequate to support newcomers’ actual lives. Necessary infrastructure was omitted in favour of a lower build cost. This led to a higher cost of living that is unaffordable for social housing residents and negates the benefits of lower cost rental accommodation. Lastly, findings showed that digital exclusion negatively influences the adjustment of low-socioeconomic status children into high-socioeconomic schools and leads to forced assimilation when learners come into daily contact with schools in their locality. The findings signify that social and economic inclusion efforts and even building projects can and should not be considered in isolation. Each form of exclusion competes with another, often exacerbating its effects. Also, of significance is the default approach to integration in South African schools of assimilation rather than multiculturalism. The outcomes of this study highlight the importance of considering multiple forms of exclusion together rather than in isolation, especially in the context of social inclusion projects.
Open Access
A content analysis on Facebook group, New Political Forum : South African mobile participation in online public spheres
(2012) Leukes, Pierrinne; Walton, Marion
This mini-dissertation aims to characterize mobile participation in the South African citizen-led Facebook Group, New Political Forum. It also investigates whether the participation on New Political Forum meets Poor's (20 05) criteria for an Online Public Sphere, as adapted from Habermasian concepts of the Public Sphere (Habermas, 1976). The study employed content analysis as its methodology to investigate a random sample drawn from all the posts and comments posted to New Political Forum on every other week day during the period 3 April to 3 May 2012. Three levels of coding were performed on the sampled data. The first level of coding used the Facebook API to determine whether the post and comments were posted via mobile applications or other platforms such as laptops and desktop computers. The second level coded the kind of social interaction which the post represented, according to six categories intended to characterise the way in which users used the group to initiate in debate and find information. Lastly the word count of each post was captured so as to establish its size. Findings revealed that 60% of all posts, and 54% of all comments in the sample were posted from mobile applications. This indicates that, during the period of study, although computers and laptops were playing a disproportionately important role (given limited access to these platforms in South Africa), participation via mobile applications nonetheless accounted for the bulk of participation. Regarding the social interactions on the site, during the month in question, 90% of posts either initiated debate or shared information with the group. Patterns of interaction via mobile applications were similar to the kinds of interaction which took place from other platforms. Posts from mobile applications nonetheless included fewer hyperlinks and pictures than other sources did. The major difference between mobile and other forms of participation related to the relative brevity of mobile posts. The mean word count of mobile posts was almost half the mean word count of posts from other platforms. Thus even though mobile posts were more frequently posted; they were very often shorter than the contributions from other sources. Applying Poor's (2005) Online Public Sphere it was found that New Political Forum does qualify to be considered an Online Public Sphere. This is because the group's history, focus and governance by committed volunteer administrators created a space for inclusive political debates and discussions where the identities of the members played a minimal role in influencing the reception of their ideas. It is suggested that information sharing should be added to Poor's criteria because of the role it plays in debate and opinion formation.
Open Access
'Digital storytelling' - unplugged public video voices and impression management in a participatory mobile media project for youth in Khayelitsha, South Africa
(2012) Hassreiter, Silke; Walton, Marion
This study documented the process of mobile Digital Storytelling with a particular focus on the development of civic awareness and voice as well as the participants’ strategies to address multiple audiences of digital stories and to distribute their video creations through pre-existing peer-networks.
Open Access
E-migrant women entrepreneurs: mobile money apps, transnational communication and the maintenance of social practices
(2023) Aderibigbe,Ireoluwa Deborah; Walton, Marion
This study set out to investigate how mobile money apps facilitate the maintenance of interpersonal relationships and transnational communication practices among migrant women entrepreneurs. Mobile money apps such as MamaMoney, MoneyTrans and Mukuru are a form of communication that are relevant and beneficial to the unbanked migrant women entrepreneurs in South Africa. The main research question was: how do mobile money apps facilitate the maintenance of interpersonal relationships and transnational communication practices among migrant women entrepreneurs? The methodology was informed by a feminist qualitative approach to three focus group discussions with fifteen participants from Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A thematic analysis of transcriptions of focus group discussions was conducted and two broad themes were identified. The first broad theme explores the communicative dimensions of money transfer through mobile money apps by migrant women entrepreneurs, particularly in relation to their roles as mothers, daughters, sisters and friends in the diaspora. The second broad theme is the use of mobile money apps to solicit emergency funds and financial support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings indicate that mobile money apps have reshaped communication practices of migrant women entrepreneurs by enhancing interpersonal communication and facilitating social practices. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the two-way nature of bonds of mutual support amongst migrants. This study also draws on the idea of remittance scripts (Carling, 2014). Remittance scripts are a helpful way to conceptualise remittances as social transactions that take several different forms. The theoretical frameworks used in this dissertation are reverse remittances (Mazzucato, 2011), networked individualism (Raine and Wellman, 2012) and polymedia (Madianou and Miller, 2013). The importance of reverse remittances during the COVID-19 period highlights reciprocal bonds of social saving when eMWEs used mobile money apps to solicit financial help and emergency relief when they were unable to work due to the COVID-19 outbreak in South Africa. Reverse remittances also highlight the shift in power relations and the need for communication between eMWEs' and their families and friends at home. As suggested by Kusimba et al., (2015) the application of networked individualism in modern African societies is used in this study to understand how mobile money apps have afforded eMWEs with personal communication channels in addition to household-centred communication around money. Polymedia is used in this study to understand how eMWEs use mobile money apps in conjunction with the complementary affordances of other platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, which compensate for limitations of mobile money apps.
Open Access
Exploring South African youths' on/offline political participation
(2012) Mbenga, Chilombo; Ndlovu, Musa; Walton, Marion
This study is located between the contradiction that youth is politically disinterested and that youth is very much politically engaged. Some scholars have argued that youth political disinterest is a threat to the life of the traditional public sphere and democracy. Against the notion of the youth's disinterest and disaffection from politics, this study points out the deficit in exploratory studies that examine and explore the relationship between young people and their political participation both in the on/offline context. In light of the contradiction as well, this current study asked the following question: how does a group of South African youth use social media to participate in the virtual public sphere? Also, what are the views of a group of South African youth about political participation (via their use of traditional and new/social media)?
Open Access
Extending the dialogue : interactional and multimodal strategies in synchronous mobile mathematics tutoring on MXit
(2013) Robbins, Bonita; Walton, Marion; Botha, Adele
The aim of this study was to explore the interaction between learners and tutors in Dr Math, a mathematics tutoring project that uses instant messaging and the mobile application, MXit. There is currently little computer-mediated communication research available about the uses of mobile instant messaging for mathematics tutoring. This study utilizes the Exchange Structure Analysis model (ESA), adopted from Lim (2006) to explore tutoring interactions between Dr Math learners and tutors over a short period. A quantitative analysis of turn-taking in tutoring interactions during February is used to identify the characteristic roles of tutors and learners; their strategies for controlling and directing dialogue; and the kinds of pragmatic moves that are used during the scaffolding of mathematics learning, as revealed by the Dr Math log for the month of February, 2010. The log consisted of N= 6084 turns in interactions between 190 learners, who interacted with three different tutors.
Open Access
Gamers in Ganglands : the ecology of gaming and participation amongst a select group of children in Ocean View, Cape Town
(2012) Venter, Marija Anja; Walton, Marion
This dissertation explores the contextual meanings of digital gaming for a group of children from the resource-constrained township of Ocean View, situated 45km outside of Cape Town. I document the domestication (Silverstone & Haddon, 1996) of mobile phones and PlayStations as technologies for gaming in this context, showing how the children appropriated the games technologies much as other household media are domesticated, in a process of double articulation.
Open Access
Gender identities at play : children's digital gaming in two settings in Cape Town.
(2013) Pallitt, Nicola; Walton, Marion; Prinsloo, Mastin
This thesis investigates children's gaming relationships with peers in out-of-school settings, and explores their interpretation of digital games as gendered media texts. As an interdisciplinary study, it combines insights from Childhood Studies, Cultural Studies, Game Studies, domestication and performance theory. The concept ludic gendering is developed in order to explain how gender "works" in games, as designed semiotic and ludic artefacts. Ludic gendering also helps to explain the appropriation of games through gameplay, and the interpretation of gendered rules and representations. The study expands on audience reception research to account for children's "readings" of digital games. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is used to study gaming relationships. Combining SNA with broadly ethnographic methods provided a systematic way of investigating children's peer relationships and gendered play.
Open Access
Inequality in digital personas - e-portfolio curricula, cultural repertoires and social media
(2018) Noakes, Travis; Walton, Marion; Cronje, Johannes
Digital and electronic learning portfolios (e-portfolios) are playing a growing role in supporting admission to tertiary study and employment by visual creatives. Despite the growing importance of digital portfolios, we know very little about how professionals or students use theirs. This thesis contributes to knowledge by describing how South African high school students curated varied e-portfolio styles while developing disciplinary personas as visual artists. The study documents the technological and material inequalities between these students at two schools in Cape Town. By contrast to many celebratory accounts of contemporary new media literacies, it provides cautionary case studies of how young people’s privileged or marginalized circumstances shape their digital portfolios as well. A four-year longitudinal action research project (2009-2013) enabled the recording and analysis of students’ development as visual artists via e-portfolios at an independent (2009-2012) and a government school (2012-2013). Each school represented one of the two types of secondary schooling recognised by the South African government. All student e-portfolios were analysed along with producers’ dissimilar contexts. Teachers often promoted highbrow cultural norms entrenched by white, English medium schooling. The predominance of such norms could disadvantage socially marginalized youths and those developing repertoires in creative industry, crafts or fan art. Furthermore, major technological inequalities caused further exclusion. Differences in connectivity and infrastructure between the two research sites and individuals’ home environments were apparent. While the project supported the development of new literacies, the intervention nonetheless inadvertently reproduced the symbolic advantages of privileged youths. Important distinctions existed between participants’ use of media technologies. Resourceintensive communications proved gatekeepers to under-resourced students and stopped them fully articulating their abilities in their e-portfolios. Non-connected students had the most limited exposure to developing a digital hexis while remediating artworks, presenting personas and benefiting from online affinity spaces. By contrast, well-connected students created comprehensive showcases curating links to their productions in varied affinity groups. Male teens from affluent homes were better positioned to negotiate their classroom identities, as well as their entrepreneurial and other personas. Cultural capital acquired in their homes, such as media production skills, needed to resonate with the broader ethos of the school in its class and cultural dimensions. By contrast, certain creative industry, fan art and craft productions seemed precluded by assimilationist assumptions. At the same time, young women grappled with the risks and benefits of online visibility. An important side effect of validating media produced outside school is that privileged teens may amplify their symbolic advantages by easily adding distinctive personas. Under-resourced students must contend with the dual challenges of media ecologies as gatekeepers and an exclusionary cultural environment. Black teens from working class homes were faced with many hidden infrastructural and cultural challenges that contributed to their individual achievements falling short of similarly motivated peers. Equitable digital portfolio education must address both infrastructural inequality and decolonisation.
Open Access
Learner involvement in discourse : a contextualised discourse analysis of undergraduate online discussions
(2001) Mlotsa, Faith Busisiwe; Walton, Marion
The study analyzes the discourse from online discussions in a Language and Communication Economics course at the University of Cape Town. The study critiques claims made by several researchers in Computer Mediated Communication that CMC as mode of Communication enhances interaction and produces hybrid discourse.
Open Access
Make yourself at home: networked domestic space, place and narrative in middle class South African everyday life
(2018) Hiltermann, Jaqueline Elizabeth; Walton, Marion
Domestic space and place, as well as how we conceptualise the home, are shifting in response to changes in digital and SNS technologies, and our relationships with such technologies. The home is not only the building in which we live, but a networked assemblage of material and digitally mediated space and place. This study examines predominantly white middle class arrangements of domestic space and place in South Africa, which provides insight into a relatively unexplored aspect of digital culture: the performance of domesticity via SNS, particularly Facebook. Furthermore gendered and racialised power dynamics and privilege in everyday life were investigated through a digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis of posts by 50 Facebook users. This data was supplemented by interviews and in-situ observations of five couples drawn from the broader sample. In combination, these methods revealed how space, place, and domestic responsibilities are secured through narrative practice. Through this study I show how Facebook has emerged as a collaborative platform where storytelling practices are influenced by the site architecture and algorithm. Facebook has opened up the private space of the home allowing domestic space, place, and practice to steadily gain visibility. This visibility, analysed in conjunction with Actor-Network Theory, revealed that homes, and narratives about the homes, are networked and dependent on relationships between actants. The home, and the relationships that stabilise it, are also reflective of discourses and power relations. Human actors negotiated territory and network roles, and these negotiations reveal power and hierarchy. Women remain more tightly bound to the home because of cultural and historical gendered discourses, and as a result the white women participants in this study continue to create place and ascribe space in digitally mediated and material versions of their homes. Furthermore, the resurgence of middle class postfeminist accounts of domesticity have promoted domestic idealism and many women have migrated back to the home spurred on by popular media, and economic privilege that has allowed them to forego paid employment. This study also shows that white, middle class women participants were offered choices to construct their own postfeminist narratives of domesticity. On the other hand, the black women employed as domestic workers by these middle class couples, were largely absent from such narratives and conversations. Findings further suggest that domestic space and place remained the domain of white women participants, and that white men were able to renegotiate their domestic responsibilities because they remained distant from domestic narratives and conversations, where they were largely associated with domestic inadequacy.
Open Access
Online and digital media usage on cell phones among low-income urban youth in Cape Town
(2009) Kreutzer, Tino; Walton, Marion
Cell phones introduce a range of new possibilities for the use and production of media, for social networking and communication, political activism, and social development. For this study, 441 grade 11 students at nine schools in low-income areas in Cape Town, South Africa were surveyed about their use of cell phones. These young South Africans have adopted a number of ways to use the Web and mobile Instant Messaging. They also commonly access, produce, and share digital media via their phones and the Internet. Internet access has, until recently, only been accessible to the wealthiest fraction of South African society (about 10% of the population) and so this is a highly significant development. Until now, little quantitative data has been available to describe exactly to what extent and how this cohort is beginning to access and use the Internet and digital media on cell phones. The students reported intensive use of cell phones to access mobile Internet applications, at a far greater level than they report using desktop computers to access the Web. Mobile Internet is considerably more accessible to these students than computer-based Internet access and they are choosing to use the Internet primarily for mobile instant messaging and other characteristic forms of mobile media use. This suggests that these students encounter a distinct, mobile version of the Internet. Their experience of Internet access and digital media may consequently be quite different to that of their computer-using peers. An exploratory media and technology usage approach was chosen to determine first, the availability of cell phones and specific features to the students, and, second, the extent to which online and digital media are being accessed, produced, or shared. A detailed questionnaire was distributed to all students from thirteen grade 11 classes at nine schools (n=441). The schools were chosen as random cluster samples from all public secondary schools located in the city's 50% most deprived areas in order to provide a detailed assessment of cell phone usage in an environment similar to that which prevails in many urban South African schools. Activity-based questions indicate that a majority of respondents (68%) have used a cell phone on the previous day to access the Internet, while half of all respondents (49%) used the mobile Internet to access the Web on the previous day. Interpersonal communication was still the most common use of phones, with 87% of respondents making calls or sending SMS messages on a typical day. A significant minority (23%) of students did not own their own personal handset, despite the near universal use of cell phones among all respondents (96% use one on a typical day). While phone ownership correlated strongly with a sense of economic deprivation as well as lower academic performance, there was no significant difference between both groups in terms of their mobile Internet usage. Thus the fact that some students do not own a phone does not seem to create a 'mobile divide' or automatically lead to exclusion from the possibilities of mobile Internet access. Online media were found to be less frequently used than broadcast and print sources. Nonetheless, the fact that 28% of low-income urban youth access online news about once every day, or more often, may have significant implications for South Africa's news media, particularly in the future. Despite the geographical limitations of this study, the results provide an illuminating snapshot of mobile media use by low-income school-going youth in urban Cape Town.
Open Access
Patchworked creative practice and mobile ecologies
(2018) Venter, Marija Anja; Walton, Marion
As the use of mobile technologies, consumer electronics and the internet expand, there are more opportunities for young visual designers around the world to gain access to design industries. Yet differences in infrastructure and spatial configurations create distinct obstacles and opportunities for emerging designers from marginal contexts, as often these infrastructures are not designed with them in mind. Employing a practice perspective, which brings together concerns around identity and infrastructure, I used ethnographic and exploratory methods to understand the creative practices of a group of young, resource-constrained, aspiring creatives from Cape Town, South Africa, who are enrolled in design courses. This thesis explores tensions between authentic creativity and continuity, as well as notions of democratization in visual design practices. Off campus, young people predominantly appropriated mobile devices as infrastructure for creative practices. They used data frugally, grabbed media in patches and snippets, and used multiple free applications together to forge creative work, participation and distributions. These practices, which include mobile-based photography, design and branding, were situated in particular creative worlds, which revolved around distinctive visual styles. Instead of vast networks with flows of data that connect infinite nodes, these creatives experienced the web and digital media as an assemblage of technologies and tariffs for mobile data. Thus, these media-related practices were more ‘patchworked’ than networked. Once enrolled in design courses, a very different repertoire of protocols, standards, materials, technologies, concepts and ways of being became infrastructural to these young people’s participation in formal visual design practices. For many participants, an enduring distance separated them from those embodied, technical and spatial requirements for later professional participation in the design industries. These tensions demonstrated how very particular configurations of resources are infrastructural to visual design practice associated with formal industries. Infrastructure and practice are thus dynamically and asymmetrically mutually constituted. This thesis employs improvisational jamming to make the role of infrastructure visible, along with specific mobile design practices. Many of these mobile systems were standardized and encoded with cultural norms, giving creatives second-hand discourses from which to build their own creative artefacts. These case studies draw attention to the global standardization of infrastructures for creative practice, which threatens to flatten the cultural richness of local creative voices.
Open Access
The power of peers: mobile youth culture, homophily and informal learning among a group of South African youth
(2016) Carew, Joanne; Walton, Marion
Popular notions of "net generations" and "digital natives" have already been subject to sustained academic critique. This dissertation builds on such critiques by documenting the local practices and distinctive mobile literacies of a group of young people in South Africa. These young people (ages 13-17, n=18) were asked how they were learning about and using ICTs. The sample lived in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, and were members of a non-profit youth development organisation, Ikamva Youth, participating in beginner coding classes. This study explored what they had already learned about ICTs from their networks of close interpersonal relationships (n=133) and asked them how they felt about their own ICT knowledge, as well as the ICT skills of those around them. Unlike their wealthier counterparts, such young people do not have ubiquitous Internet connectivity, ease of access to consumer electronics or many opportunities to learn about computers in particular. Yet, rather than being stuck on the wrong side of a 'digital divide' or waiting passively for government to fulfil broken promises about digital literacy in schools, they were actively pursuing knowledge about ICTs and mobiles in particular. They demonstrated distinctive 'mobile-centric' repertoires, fostered through learning about ICTs from their strong ties. This gave rise to a distinctive mobile youth culture, shaped by race, class, and gender dynamics. Gendered biases and preoccupations, peer networks and technicities were particularly important. While this allows many creative and strategic appropriations of mobile technology, it also means that largely homophilous informal learning networks in part set the bounds of their learning. When most of what you're learning comes from your friends, it really matters who those friends are. Unsurprisingly, gaps in their digital literacies were apparent. In particular, their ability to fully participate in modern digital publics is curtailed. It remains essential to provide formal opportunities for young people to learn about ICTs at school, but also informally via a larger network of interpersonal relationships and communities of practice such as Ikamva Youth. Mobile technology presents many opportunities and suggests new approaches to digital literacy. Nonetheless, it seems likely that, given difficulties in accessing high status ICTs and bridging capital in particular, access and knowledge gaps will continue to disadvantage such young people.
Open Access
Remixing the tech: the digital media ecologies of the hip-hop artists from Grahamstown, South Africa
(2017) Schoon, Alette Jeanne; Walton, Marion; Haupt, Adam
This ethnographic study describes the digital media ecologies of hip-hop artists in the marginalised township spaces of a town in South Africa. It shows how technology appropriation here is highly contextual and linked to social context, while simultaneously informed by limited digital infrastructure that characterises marginalised communities in the Global South. In describing their social context, the study situates these young people in a post-apartheid space of entrenched racialised inequality, where unemployed black youth have very few economic prospects. Here hip-hop offers protection against despair as it allows a young person to claim a dignified sense of self, which is partly constituted through digital media competency. Through the Black Consciousness philosophy, hip-hop artists in Grahamstown become highly critical of self-defeating narratives rooted in racism, colonialism and apartheid, which often manifest in violent forms of urban masculinity. Instead they find ways to "remix" their identities by incorporating alternative notions of a successful self. These new identities foreground agency and competency, and are informed both by knowledge of African tradition and language, and newly acquired competency in entrepreneurship, artistic genres and digital skills. The study argues that acquisition of digital skills in this space is best conceptualised through the community of practice approach, where skills development is social and linked to a sense of belonging and progress. Just as the hip-hop artists claim agency in remixing their notion of self, they also claim agency in remixing the limited digital technology available to them into various assemblages, so crafting innovative solutions to the constraints of limited and expensive digital infrastructure. Here, through a hip-hop culture that champions overcoming adversity, dysfunctional digital technology is constantly repaired and remixed. Hitherto, research on digital media use in the Global South has predominantly focused on the mobile phone in isolation. This study instead argues for the merits of a holistic digital ethnography, since observations of how these young people combine technologies such as mobile phones, computers and DVD players in everyday life, illustrate how innovation in marginalised spaces may be focused around the remixing of technology.
Open Access
Semiotic machines : software in discourse
(2008) Walton, Marion; Marsden, Gary; Burn, Andrew
This study develops new theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of software as a medium of communication. This study analyses voting software, educational software, search engines, and combat and narrative in digital games. In each case it investigates how proprietary software affords discourse, and suggests a way of characterising users’ experience of this discourse. These affordances constitute the rules of communication, or ‘rules of speaking’, ‘rules of seeing’, and ‘writing-rights’ which proprietary software makes available to users, situating them within specific power-relations in the process.
Open Access
Taking back the tech: an analysis of take back the S 2015 twitter campaign during 16 days of activism against gender violence
(2018) Mabaso, Samukelisiwe; Walton, Marion
The online abuse and harassment of women through hate speech is a growing problem. This study explores responses to abuse of women on Twitter, by analysing the tactics employed by the feminist network, Take Back The Tech! (TBTT) to combat online abuse through their global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign. This study employs various analytical frameworks including feminism, intersectionality, counterpublics, and agenda-setting to investigate TBTT’s tweets and other Twitter users’ responses to the campaign, as suggested by Twitter replies and mentions. During their campaign, TBTT used online activism for both advocacy and mobilisation. Their campaign also worked to empower marginalised voices through the sharing of survivor stories while embracing global dialogue. Calls to action were a fundamental tactic employed by TBTT during the campaign. These calls to action encouraged both online and offline action. TBTT highlighted the need to share stories of strategies for countering violence against women (VAW), to organise offline by arranging meetings to discuss technology-related violence, to transform tools for digital safety, and to encourage followers to make their own digital safety roadmaps. The majority of TBTT’s tweets were original tweets and TBTT also frequently retweeted other users’ tweets throughout their campaign. Through this act of agenda-setting, TBTT aimed to raise public awareness of technology-related VAW. Hashtags enabled TBTT to keep track of the discussion, gauge the progress and success of their campaign, and it also allowed Twitter users to follow and contribute towards the hashtagged conversation. Hashtags were also an effective method of networkbuilding which connected TBTT to other Twitter campaigns dealing with similar issues. These hashtags linked specific TBTT campaigns to broader feminist concerns, while also building connections with feminist counterpublics. TBTT used Twitter for agenda-setting by linking to external media in their tweets. Including these URLs was an effective way of pointing followers to additional information such as their own website, commercial media websites, and websites of feminist and women’s organisations. Furthermore, TBTT overcame Twitter’s 140-character limit and included additional information by using images such as pixel-art characters, memes, infographics, and photos of campaigners’ work. The majority of users who engaged with TBTT during 16 Days did so via mentions while only a few engaged via replies. Thus, despite the active campaigning by TBTT, the Twitter data suggests a relatively low level of active engagement. It is unclear from the available data whether this limited response reflects weaknesses in the campaign, the potentially stifling effect of online abuse or whether followers might have preferred private engagement. Thus, while empowering women, engaging with them and sharing information, tools, resources and tips in order to put online abuse on the public agenda, TBTT’s campaign also highlights the continued importance of “safe” spaces for feminists.
Open Access
The mobile pillars of sexual relationships. Pleasures and pressures: the practice of sexting in a gendered society amongst young people in South Africa.
(2019) Antonie, Cecile Olive; Walton, Marion
This dissertation investigates the diverse practices of sexting within the context of youth culture in South Africa. There is not yet a clear consensus on the definition of “sexting”, but in this case, it is understood as sending and receiving messages or images via social media that have sexual content, especially nude photographs. This research focuses on young heterosexual people in Cape Town from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, exploring their motives and practices within the context of sexting. In this study 28 individuals aged 13 to 21 participated in in-depth, open-ended interviews which produced qualitative data. This research identifies and combines the theoretical works of Erving Goffman’s (1959) impression management theory and Marcel Mauss’s (1969) theory of gift-giving as lenses through which to study sexting. Both theories are still relevant due to the enduringly performative nature of social interactions. The data garnered from this study confirms that the rules of impression management and reciprocity and exchange apply in the era of social media in that sexting is a practice of social exchange whereby participants try to create the best possible persona, in order to form and secure relationships. Young people negotiate social obligations, status and power in a gendered society in relation to gift-exchange and reciprocity on mobile devices. The study further highlights that although sexism exists in this sphere of society, and sexting practices are fraught with gender inequities and double standards, young women are fighting to maintain a favourable online persona, by countering the derogatory term ‘fuck-boy’. Currently South African law prohibits sexting amongst minors, punishable as a crime. This dissertation argues that young people are motivated by pleasure and pressure to sext; excluding them from the public sphere of social media or trying to control their online sexual practice, is unlikely to prevent harm. Furthermore, humiliating or punishing minors for engaging in sexual activity online could be harmful in itself.
Open Access
Towards understanding mobile messaging ecologies : an exploration of the meanings young people attach to instant messaging channels
(2013) Scholtz, Katharina; Walton, Marion
Mobile communications have added an ever present layer to our personal communication through which social dynamics can be reconstructed. In youth culture specifically, instant messaging allows young people to achieve limited autonomy, explore peer groups and an evolving sense of self. This dissertation explores a model for understanding how instant messaging facilitates this. Theories of media ecologies provide useful ways of explaining media environments. Nonetheless ecologies are usually conceptualised in relation to mass media rather than networked media and tend to assume that ecologies are situated in a particular physical space. The theory is nonetheless useful in understanding the everyday experience of young people using media. By extending media ecology theory to account for the personal communicative ecologies of instant messaging, this study extends the notion of ecology to account for a sense of digital social space outside the constructs of physical space. Through taking an interactional epistemological stance, qualitative research was conducted. Two focus groups were conducted to explore how instant messaging channels meet the needs of a group of young people from middle class contexts in Cape Town. The resultant discussions are applied to the framework of a 'layered' communicative ecology, taking technology, social and discursive layers into account and establishing the centrality of social space within a new and expanded model of networked messaging ecologies. The central aim of this research is to explore how relevant the application of media ecologies would be to an exploration of digital spaces of communication and practice.
Open Access
Using formalised floor-plans in the design and creation of virtual environments
(2005) Beirowski, Charlene; Marsden, Gary; Walton, Marion
Virtual Reality (VR) is an new and exciting medium waiting to be fully explored and capitalised by media experts. The advantages of the 3D graphics andinteractive nature of VR allows unique communication opportunities from a content expert to a target audience. Despite the attractiveness of VR as a communications medium, it has not yet reached its full potential in that role. We believe that this is because content experts do not have the necessary tools to create Virtual Environment (VE) applications to their specifications. The design of a VE is complex and tools to support every aspect of the design processes are few and far between. On the other hand, there has been much activity in the development of authoring tools in view of supporting content experts in the creation of VEs. Although these tools simplify the creation process, they still require some degree of programming. We believe that in order to allow a content expert to exploit the medium, support of the design phase is needed to bridge the gap between designers and creators of these environments.