Despite apparent feminist advancements within contemporary South Africa, media representations continue to reproduce discourses that inhibit processes of gender transformation. As such, the media represents an important site of continued struggle over gendered meanings and power. While prolific research on gender and the media has been undertaken, there is still a need in South Africa to explore the ways in which media professionals themselves perceive their role in generating gendered media texts. This research therefore aimed to unpack media professionals’ perceptions of gender transformation through their work. Furthermore, given the perceived limitations of certain approaches to gender and the media in South Africa, feminist theory conceptualised as “progressive” was applied in the study towards strengthening engendered media production research. The study involved a thematic, critical discourse analysis of newspaper texts and interviews with journalists and editors from three weekly news publications. The study revealed a high level of discursive contradiction in gender representations, especially in the tabloidised newspapers. Gendered meanings were effected through different discursive devises, namely complicit, advocate and spatial discourses, which played out variously within different spaces of the newspapers. In particular, gender transformative representations of the “private” sphere lagged significantly behind those related to the “public” sphere. In addition, important negotiations over gendered meaning were being undertaken in the more “informal” newspaper spaces, such as columns and jokes pages, often neglected in news media research. The interviews further highlighted lags in feminist trajectories pertaining to the “private sphere”, with liberal-inclusionary feminist conceptions of gender transformation, focused on women’s public participation, predominating. With a few exceptions, progressive feminist perspectives, moving beyond numerical representation towards greater attention to symbolic, relational and integrated understandings of gender, were generally lacking. In addition, many participants conveyed a largely positivistic discourse of objectivity through the media. However, various discursive strategies through which social transformation values were imbibed into newspaper texts were identified, and the research highlighted potential discursive opportunities for gender transformative change. The central strategy identified was the need for the development of a progressive gender lens and the decentralisation of a liberal-inclusionary feminist paradigm within the media and broader society. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Sociology / unrestricted

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T12:29:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Claudia.pdf: 1977242 bytes, checksum: f5e703afb1471626ff9be3c0deff4a89 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-04-12 / Os discursos da mídia e as mediações culturais referentes à campanha eleitoral de Marina Silva à Presidência da República em 2010 são o tema central desta tese. A hospitalidade enquanto dádiva fundadora e mantenedora de vínculos políticos e os processos de representações e apropriações desses discursos nas dinâmicas de produção constituíram os parâmetros da análise da cobertura de imprensa realizada a partir de um de recorte cronológico definido com base no calendário oficial da campanha: de março a novembro de 2010. O estudo empreendido articulou os processos de construção da imagem midiatizada junto à própria candidata e a correligionários anfitriões de Casas de Marina , nome dado a comitês eleitorais de natureza comunitária. O referencial teórico da pesquisa incorporou os conceitos comunicação pública, hospitalidade, mediações culturais e marketing político. A pesquisa empírica envolveu a análise da cobertura jornalística dos jornais Folha de S.Paulo e O Estado de S. Paulo além de entrevistas com a própria candidata, com gestores de sua campanha e com 11 líderes das unidades Casas de Marina . Espera-se com este texto pensar de forma mais abrangente a relação entre os movimentos da sociedade civil e a participação política institucional, evidenciar que a dádiva entre os modernos , circula e fundamenta as relações determinadas com base nas mediações culturais nas quais se efetiva. Como procurei mostrar, a hospitalidade no ambiente doméstico, assim como no ambiente virtual, propiciam as bases para a formação dos vínculos de natureza política em um mundo cada vez mais competitivo e conflituoso.