Development aid in most of the developing countries can sometimes compromise the principles of public service broadcasting (PSB). This may be true when reflected against the tension between donor financed programmes in Malawi and the mandate of Television Malawi (TVM). Although the donor intentions are noble, the strings attached to the funding are sometimes retrogressive to the role of PSBs. A case in point is how donors dictate terms on the HIV/Aids communication strategies at TVM. Producers receive money from donors with strings attached on how the money should be used and accounted for. If producers deviate they are sanctioned through withholding funding, shifting schedules and reducing the funding frequency. The donors also dictate who to interview on what subject, how to conduct capacity building. Some scholars have researched much on the impact of commercialisation of the media. This study is a departure from these traditional interferences; it interrogates the interest of philanthropy tendencies by international donors in the three chosen HIV/Aids programmes broadcast by TVM. The study investigates the extent of pressure exerted by donors on the producers of HIV/Aids programmes in Malawi. Thus, the study seeks to illicit specifics in the power relationship between the donor and the producer hence the study employs the political economy of development aid as applied to the public service broadcasting and communication for development. The study employed qualitative research methods and techniques (in-depth interviews, case study and document analysis). The study reveals how donor ideologies dominate the Aids messages-content output of the texts constructed. The study argues that cultural alienation of the Malawian audiences retards efforts of donors in combating HIV infection rate.

This study is a qualitative ethnographic investigation of how teenagers in Kampala, Uganda, who read the HIV/AIDS publication aimed at adolescents, Straight Talk, negotiate HIV/AIDS messages. It seeks to establish to what extent these secondary school teenagers accept the key messages (known as ABC; Abstain, Be faithful or use a Condom) and understand the factual aspects of the messages about HIV/AIDS, its process of transmission and prevention. It also seeks to probe how the lived realities of the teenagers affect their particular negotiations of the HIV/AIDS messages. It includes a focus on how proximity to HIV/AIDS, gender and family economic disposition might affect teenagers, negotiation of the HIV/AIDS meanings. To investigate the respondents’ reception of HIV/AIDS messages, the study employed focus groups that consisted of two stages, namely the ‘news game’ and group discussions. In the ‘news game’ stage (Philo, 1990; Kitzinger, 1993) the teenage participants were required to produce a version of a one-page copy of an HIV/AIDS newspaper targeting teenagers. In the second stage of the focus group a structured discussion probed the teenagers’ negotiation of the HIV/AIDS media messages. In the news game, the teenagers on the whole reproduced the key Straight Talk HIV/AIDS messages ‘Abstain, Be faithful or use a Condom’ and also images showing the effects of HIV/AIDS but featured fewer images depicting the factual aspects of HIV/AIDS process of transmission and risky behaviour. In the structured discussion that followed the news game, it was evident that not all the teenagers necessarily believed the messages they produced. In spite of producing the ABC Straight Talk messages, some of them were uncertain and confused about the absolute safety of the condom because of fears that they were either porous, expired or would interfere with sexual pleasure. Secondly, though many of the teenagers in the study reproduced images that showed that they consider marriage as desirable and talked about their desire to abstain from sex till marriage, a considerable number think abstinence is not achievable due to competing values. Thirdly, the participant teenagers could differentiate between HIV and AIDS but many did not realise that with the advent of anti-retroviral drugs even people who have AIDS can look normal. In spite of repeating the Straight Talk message that “no one was safe” and being aware of the risky behaviour that their fellow teenagers get involved in, the teenagers seemed to think that their age cohort is safe from HIV and it is the adults who are likely to infect them. The study findings further indicate that the teenagers’ lived experience at times influence their negotiation of HIV/AIDS media messages. This was probed in terms of economic standing, gender and proximity to HIV/AIDS. In relation to gender one surprising discovery was that certain girls in the study feared getting pregnant more than getting HIV/AIDS. The study finally suggests that these findings are of significance for designing future media initiatives in relation to HIV/AIDS.

This study explores the multiple ways in which Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) functioned through concrete biomedical institutions, namely, the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the World Health Organization (WHO). AIDS is viewed as a product of the full range of institutional practices in which it became embedded and in which it was set within the boundaries of Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease (see the Preface section). This biomedical model of disease was materialized through journalistic practices and sold as news. Within these operative terms can be understood another analytical strategy that also designates the main domain of my study of this contemporary social form: I argue in this thesis that knowledge about AIDS was by no means dependent solely on the objective, scientifically determined, "received narrative" of biomedicine; what is today known as AIDS is also a product of a wide range of social practices produced and reproduced over time and space. AIDS is also an outcome of the resolutions, judgements and decisions that working journalists made over time in terms of what they generated or covered as news; the disease is also product of a large assortment of representational mirrors that I call `authentic voices', to take as good examples, the "narrative of moral protest", the narrative of a "homosexual disease", the narrative of a "heterosexual disease," and the narrative of a "modern-day Black Death" (plague). The story of AIDS in the media can also be seen to be defined by the proliferation of these authentic voices. From this reading, the distinctive trait of AIDS in the media lies in the fact that it is a constructed object, a disease framed through a specific structure of meanings. When we look at these structure of meanings we find that their moral and cultural assumptions and stereotypical connotations embody certain aspects of the organism of the society within which they were created and nourished over a much longer history. / Sociology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)

This study examines the home as a context of viewing for the television programme Intersexions in the township of Ginsberg in the Eastern Cape. The central question asked is whether the household influences the interpretation of the programme. The research was mainly conducted through ethnographical methods of participant observation and focus group interviews. Six families were observed and six gender-based focus groups convened. Drawing from the work of Morley (1986) and Lull (1990) that argues that the home be taken more seriously as a context of viewing; this study posits that the home is a rule-bound micro-society that influences the interpretation of media messages. As a starting point, this study contends with the arguments that the South African government has been slow to acknowledge the extent of the problem presented by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Much has been written about the inefficiency of state efforts to educate the public, with some pundits suggesting that government communications strategies have largely been outdated and thus resisted by audiences (Treffry-Goatley, Mahlinza & Imrie, 2013). To counter the pandemic, a large number of independent educational television serials have been launched in South Africa, and met with popular appeal since 1994. Furthermore, this development is in line with global trends of high audience ratings for Entertainment- Education (EE) programmes (Singhal et al., 1993). To investigate complex issue of EE reception by audiences in this burgeoning area of study, the programme at the centre of this study, Intersexions, is a good example. The serial, which concluded its second season in August 2013, is second to only the established soap opera, Generations, in television ratings in South Africa. Therefore, the impressive ratings garnered by educational serials in South Africa are a chance for audience studies to study audiences in context. This research investigates Intersexions using the understanding that television audiences must be analysed in "cultural and historic specific" sites because the struggle to make meanings of texts takes place at the moment when the text and subject meet (Fiske, 1987). This research investigates the assumption that the meanings made by audiences depend not just on the text, but also on environment. This means that the research delves into the situational context in which media are used and interpreted. Therefore, the central aim of this study is to analyse television viewing of the entertainment education programme, Intersexions, in the natural setting of the home, which is in line with analysing television viewers in cultural and historically specific sites.

Since the first diagnosis of HIV/AIDS more than three decades ago, the epidemic remains a humanitarian challenge. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the infection rate has escalated at an alarming rate over the years. Lesotho is no exception. Multiple stakeholders have resorted to different media platforms, including community radio to communicate HIV/AIDS awareness messages with the aim of reducing the HIV infection spread. This study focuses on a community radio station as a way of making sense of HIV/AIDS communication. Using the case of MCRS, the study assesses the contribution of this community broadcaster on HIV/AIDS awareness in Mafeteng district, in Lesotho. Two theories: the Public Sphere Theory and the Agenda Setting Theory guided the study and were used to conceptualise the contribution of this community radio station towards contributing to HIV/AIDS awareness in the community of broadcast. In a bid to assess how MCRS programmes contribute to HIV/AIDS awareness and education; the researcher employed a qualitative research methodology. The data were collected using two data collection instruments, namely face-toface interviews and focus group discussions. Thematic analysis was used to deduce the meaning and present the findings. The findings reveal that MCRS programmes largely contribute to HIV/AIDS awareness in the community. The station’s programmes on HIV/AIDS awareness are easily understood and influence communities’ socio-behavioural change as they enlighten them about the dangers of HIV/AIDS and how to reduce its spread. The results also reveal that live broadcasts proved to be more effective as they encourage two-way communication whereby listeners are involved and participate in these HIV/AIDS programmes. It is therefore concluded that MCRS programmes have been useful in the dissemination of valuable HIV/AIDS awareness messages / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication Science)