‘And I would ask myself, what’s being gay got to do with this anyway?’ Constructions of queer subject positions in student’s stories

In this paper, the author explores some of the issues associated with teaching about compulsory heterosexuality and schooling in an undergraduate sociology programme. Using a novel approach to gathering data, the article analyses the stories students submitted about themselves or others who were counter normative in terms of gender and sexuality in school. Informed by the work of Ahmed and Foucault, this article explores what kinds of gendered and sexualised subject positions become possible through the stories of students, and how are these subject positions interpellated and constituted relationally? Despite progressive legislation, queer activism and the significant visibility of gender and sexuality counter-normative identities in the South African media, the analysis highlights that students’ position school attending queer youth as (1) stereotyped caricatured subjects, (2) objects of fear and (3) subjects of violence. These subject positions serve as straightening devices that interpellate queer school attending youth as unfamiliar, not belonging and unworthy and therefore requiring change. Insights from this article can inform the research and practice which is pivotal to addressing cisheteronormativity not only in schools but cultural ideas, norms and practices too.

South African newspaper coverage of COVID-19: A content analysis

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has led to unprecedented media coverage globally and in South Africa where, at the time of writing, over 20,000 people had died from the virus. This article explores how mainstream print media covered the COVID-19 pandemic during this time of crisis. The news media play a key role in keeping the public informed during such health crises and potentially shape citizens’ perceptions of the pandemic. Drawing on a content analysis of 681 front-page news stories across eleven English-language publications, we found that nearly half of the stories used an alarmist narrative, more than half of the stories had a negative tone, and most publications reported in an episodic rather than thematic manner. Most of the stories focused on impacts of the pandemic and included high levels of sensationalism. In addition, despite the alarmist and negative nature of the reporting, most of the front-page reports did not provide information about ways to limit the spread of the virus or attempt to counter misinformation about the pandemic, raising key issues about the roles and responsibilities of the South African media during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study shows that South African newspaper coverage of COVID-19 was largely negative, possibly to attract audience attention and increase market share, but that this alarmist coverage left little possibility for citizens’ individual agency and self-efficacy in navigating the pandemic.

African Ecomedia

In African Ecomedia, Cajetan Iheka examines the ecological footprint of media in Africa alongside the representation of environmental issues in visual culture. Iheka shows how, through visual media such as film, photography, and sculpture, African artists deliver a unique perspective on the socioecological costs of media production, from mineral and oil extraction to the politics of animal conservation. Among other works, he examines Pieter Hugo's photography of electronic waste recycling in Ghana and Idrissou Mora-Kpai's documentary on the deleterious consequences of uranium mining in Niger. These works highlight not only the exploitation of African workers and the vast scope of environmental degradation but also the resourcefulness and creativity of African media makers. They point to the unsustainability of current practices while acknowledging our planet's finite natural resources. In foregrounding Africa's centrality to the production and disposal of media technology, Iheka shows the important place visual media has in raising awareness of and documenting ecological disaster even as it remains complicit in it.

Who set the narrative? Assessing the influence of Chinese global media on news coverage of COVID-19 in 30 African countries

The size of China’s State-owned media’s operations in Africa has grown significantly since the early 2000s. Previous research on the impact of increased Sino-African mediated engagements has been inconclusive. Some researchers hold that public opinion toward China in African nations has been improving because of the increased media presence. Others argue that the impact is rather limited, particularly when it comes to affecting how African media cover China-related stories. This article contributes to this debate by exploring the extent to which news media in 30 African countries relied on Chinese news sources to cover China and the COVID-19 outbreak during the first-half of 2020. By computationally analyzing a corpus of 500,000 written news stories, this paper shows that, compared to other major global players (e.g. Reuters, AFP), content distributed by Chinese media (e.g. Xinhua, China Daily) is much less likely to be used by African news organizations, both in English and French speaking countries. The analysis also reveals a gap in the prevailing themes in Chinese and African media’s coverage of the pandemic. The implications of these findings for the sub-field of Sino-African media relations, and the study of global news flows are discussed.

Environmental and social injustices in East Africa: A critique of the modernization approach to environmental communication

The existing environmental injustices in the world have often been linked to industrialisation and modernisation of nations. In a bid to develop and modernise their nations, East African governments have adopted neoclassical developmentalist ideals of 'modernization' and 'capital investments‘, which largely involve exploitation of natural and human resources. The consequence is rampant and severe environmental degradation and related impacts in the region. While environmental degradation impacts affect all people residing in the region, the poor are hit hardest since they do not have ways to deal with disasters; hence, it becomes an environmental and a social justice issue. Although mass media are viewed as change agents and key players in the development agenda, and are often tasked to communicate information as widely as possible, these have adopted hierarchical and top down approaches to environmental and social justice issues and, in the process, helped to deepen the existing inequalities in society. From perspectives of Development Communication, this article critiques modernization discourses to development including: 'Top-down experts of development‘, 'Blaming the victim‘ and 'Social Darwinism‘. The purpose is to demonstrate how the East African media deploy this framework to (mis)represent environmental issues leading to aggravated environmental and social injustices in these societies. The article argues for a 'solution journalism approach‘ to environmental communication, whereby media as advocates of development, focus more on the contextual factors within which environmental issues and problems transpire.

Nimophulelani na umfazi: Ndiyindoda.

In 2019, the South African media put a spotlight on the brutal killings of women by men in the months of August and September. This femicide sparked conversations around masculinity which in turn spurred this article. Herein, I seek to investigate the space that will enable pastoral care to dialogue between Jesus’ masculinity and the masculinity of umXhosa men. This will be done through a comparison of Jesus’ words to the woman in Mark 14:6, which is included in the title of this paper, and the umXhosa word for masculinity, “ndiyindoda” (I am a man). The story of Jesus’ healthy masculinity as God will be linked to amaXhosa masculinity. The aim of this article is to ascertain whether pastoral care can serve as a channel between these two masculinities. The relational indigenous methodology will be employed through narrative pastoral care. In that, narrative enables one to hear people’s stories and link them to God’s story.