African Journals Online
Ecquid Novi

Volume 22, Issue 1, 2001
Abstracts

Exploring a model for training journalism students
Claassen, G.

Abstract: The decline in general knowledge, and more specifically knowledge of history, among students has become a serious problem to journalism lecturers worldwide. It also reflects detrimentally on the media employing these students, as the media are increasingly becoming the target of criticism for superficiality and lack of contextual references in news reports. This article explores the influence of entertainment on news presentation and the development of a serious need for the introduction of a basic level of history to journalism students. It reinvestigates this need in the light of recent arguments by Berger in South Africa and Hirsch, Patterson and others in the USA. It also compares applicants to journalism courses who studied history at undergraduate level, and those who did not.


Jerry Springer and the Marlboro Man in Africa : globalisation and cultural eclecticism 
Eko, L.

Abstract: Despite its relative isolation from the global culture industry, telecommunications and mass communication centres and markets, Africa is buffeted by the winds of globalisation. Under World Bank and the IMF structural adjustment programs virtually all African countries privatised their telecommunications and mass media sectors, thus opening them up to Western multi-national corporate investors. Though there might be an impression that African culture is being inundated and destroyed by American mass mediated culture, it is argued that Africans tend to select only certain aspects of Western cultural idioms, Africanise them and use them to promote African cultural values. Thus, it is argued, globalisation has had positive effects on certain aspects of African culture.


Myths and news narratives : towards a comparative perspective of news 
Berkowitz, D.Nossek, H.

Abstract: Comparative research across cultures provides a fruitful terrain for research into myths and narratives that are embedded in news content. The study of news as myth or narrative helps to examine the enduring values that a culture tells about itself. This perspective suggests that news is a social construction, but it also suggests that news amounts to an ongoing telling and retelling of familiar stories with a relatively consistent set of themes, actors and moral lessons that link with the broad, common beliefs of a dominant ideology. This study offers a nexus of structuralist and ethnographic approaches that creates a conceptual complement for the above-mentioned kind of research. Following a conceptual discussion, the article addresses methodological considerations and offers a scheme for conducting research with a cross-cultural research team.



The Prague Post's readership in Post-communist Czech Republic
Garrison, B.

Abstract: This article presents a case study to analyse the readership and explore the role of an English-language newspaper in a region where English is not the dominant language. This study focused on a weekly publication in the former Communist Czech Republic, The Prague Post, reports a 1999 readership survey and, through use of interviews of the managers of the newspaper at that time, interprets the findings of the readership survey. It compares results of the most-recent study with previous research conducted by the newspaper's marketing department. The Prague Post was found to serve a sophisticated and diverse multilingual audience; regular readers were found to be highly educated, international in both their personal and business-professional lives working in professional-level careers, multilingual, young, mostly single, mostly male, and economically varied.



Race as political strategy by US presidential candidates : a case study 
Weerakkody, N.D.

Abstract: Race has played an important part in US presidential politics in contemporary history. Different political parties and candidates have followed covert strategies playing on the prejudices of white voters - both cognitively and emotionally - by linking race-related issues to the majority's individual and group interests. This elite discourse carried to the public by the mainstream media, along with media's practices of stereotyping, priming, framing and agenda setting, help to justify racial prejudice, discrimination against minorities and their marginalized status, while maintaining the status quo. Taking the social constructionist position, this case study examines the opinions expressed by a sample of undecided voters selected from different geographic locations at various stages of the 1992 US presidential campaign under the themes 'Candidates' racial prejudice' and 'Race is used as political strategy by candidates.'


The Big Mac hamburger: is it used to communicate a distorted media message? 
Harmse, C.Jordaan, A.C.Jordaan, Y.

Abstract: For more than a decade the Big Mac index has served as a guide to the layman as to whether currencies are at their 'correct' exchange rate level. This article compares the postal rate of a standard letter in South Africa, relative to other selected countries, based on the Big Mac purchasing-power parity. It provides a theoretical overview of the Big Mac Index, its application and shortcomings. The findings indicate that government, private companies and labor unions should be very cautious when using only the Big Mac Index for comparison purposes. It may be concluded that when the Big Mac hamburger is used to compare and determine the relative value of postal rates between South Africa and the rest of the world, a distorted message is communicated.


Black role protrayals in South African television advertising
Cassim, S.Monteiro, M.

Abstract: Limited research has been done to examine the role portrayals of blacks in South African television advertising. This article gives an aggregate picture through content analysis, of the image of blacks that television advertising presented to South African audiences in the mid-1990s. There appears to have been a significant over-representation of blacks in professional/semi-professional occupations and a significant under-representation of blacks in low-skilled occupations. Blacks were observed to be speaking English more than any other language. Blacks were also portrayed in aspirational roles rather than in more likely socially realistic ones.