Includes abstract. / I headed to Europe's least visited country for two weeks, to bolster their tourism count and find out if Albanians really were the depraved criminals that the rest of the continent took them to be. And was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-76). / 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.

Print media campaign material strongly influences people's perceptions of illness and health and the role and purpose of medication (NSMC, 2010: np). Because adherence is critical to the successful management of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the introduction of antiretroviral treatment (ART) into the South African health sector presented a major communications challenge, namely how best to communicate awareness and administration of the drugs and how they should be taken. Over the past ten years, the government Department of Health (DoH), the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), and other prominent nongovernmental HIV/AIDS organizations (NGOs) such as Love Life, Soul City and the Bishop Tutu Foundation have defined a number of different objectives aimed at the promotion of prescription generic antiretroviral drugs (Venter, 2014:3). This has led to an increase in the number of campaigns, each having singular visual representations of HIV/AIDS and users' relationships to antiretroviral drugs. Despite this, stigma and distrust around HIV/AIDS is prominent among the South African public (Rubincam, 2013:13). As a result, there remains a large amount of ambivalence toward the impact of ART on the body and its place within many communities. This has a direct bearing on issues of adherence. For this reason, it is important to study the nature and efficacy of the materials currently being used for social marketing in this context. This qualitative study therefore questions the nature of the current visual language of ART related leaflets and posters found in four Western Cape community clinics and asks whether the content effectively communicates an understanding of antiretroviral therapy, specifically around issues of adherence. In this study, I aim to identify ART adherence social marketing communication strategies used by leading NGOs and the DoH in South Africa. The nature of the visual and textual representations of antiretroviral print media campaign materials found in four Western Cape community clinic environments is established. The purpose of this research is to provide contemporary and useful information on the style, content, and design of social marketing materials in the hope that it will add significant value for further research on ART adherence. This study is a microanalysis focused on quality, not quantity. The investigation is modest. It does not consider a large sample and is intended as a starting point for further research. I hope to identify possible gaps between the combination of messages offered in leaflet and poster print media, and the needs of those infected with the virus, especially at a time when it necessitates they begin ART. The intended impact of this research is to encourage an increased understanding and awareness by government and NGO marketing departments of their campaign material so that it facilitates the transition onto treatment in a way that is empowering, informative, empathetic, and responsible.

Includes bibliographical references. / This paper describes my involvement in the Volkswagen Junior World Masters film series for 2010. A three-DVD box set is being submitting for review. In the latter sections of this document, I outline the efforts that went into writing, directing and editing these films for broadcast on international television and over the Internet. In the opening chapters I assess the marketing strategy behind the Volkswagen Junior World Masters and discuss the value of the tournament from a brand seeding perspective. I describe how our media-saturated culture is making it extremely difficult for brands to achieve saliency, particularly amongst the youth. I pay special attention to Generation Y (also known as Generation Me) asthis highly individualised group prompted Volkswagen to create a soccer showcase specifically for pre-adolescents. I demonstrate that this major brand-building endeavour is designed to groom the preteens of today into becoming the Volkswagen drivers of tomorrow. I trace the efficacy of this campaign back to the collective childhood dream of achieving global soccer stardom. By becoming an important stepping-stone in the possible fulfillment of that dream, Volkswagen is tactically aligning itself with the increasingly self-interested proclivities of Generation Me.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-61). / Playing video games at a Local Area Network (LAN) has become a complex social activity. Engaging with these games requires more than simply accomplishing the games’ objectives: it is also a process of socialisation within a community of gamers. Through my observation of players' activities at a Cape Town based LAN event, I begin to outline where, when and how social learning and sharing occurs at these events. I will show how playing games in a LAN setting can teach valuable interpersonal and social skills.

Includes bibliographical references. / In recent years South Africa has seen the formation of a nascent craft beer industry, with scores of small, independently owned breweries appearing in all corners of the country. Given this growth this descriptive study aims to provide an account of the marketing strategies used within the industry. This study used method and data triangulation, involving both qualitative and quantitative research approaches . Consecutive sampling of all active South African craft breweries was us ed, in order to give a holistic and accurate account (where n=86) . Data was analysed through qualitative content analysis of surveys administered to 24 craft brewers. Furthermore, social media data from the Facebook and Twitter pages of the 86 breweries was analysed quantitatively and through inferential statistics. This aimed at determining whether there were relationships between social media activity and audience size and engagement. The results of this research suggest that craft breweries in South Africa rely heavily on below - the - line and direct marketing tactics. The social media analysis also showed significant positive correlations between brewery -driven activity and audience size as well as engagement.

Mediated public spaces both on and offline privilege the educated male elite, and thus cannot address the specific needs of women (Huyer and Sikoska, 2003:2), or their points of view. This study aimed to explore the extent to which three African feminist blogs realise the democratising potential of the blogosphere as well as the ways in which they articulate the concerns and perspectives of women whose vantage points are often silenced by mainstream discourses of citizenship. As a specifically gendered platform within a feminist public sphere, these blogs offer insight into the fluidity of the private/public dichotomy in online media spaces, and how this determines particular discourses of citizenship both on and offline. Using a qualitative-quantitative content analysis of 45 blog posts across three African feminist blogs (Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, Her Zimbabwe, and MsAfropolitan) during July and August 2016, this study investigated how women's engagement with feminist issues is enabled by alternative online media spaces, and in what ways blogs offer African women a relatively democratic space for sharing and discussion. Through an analysis of blog content, the study revealed that contributors deploy particular communicative strategies such as first-person narration, reflection of personal experience in relation to broader social, economic and political issues, and a confessional intimacy that altogether prioritise women's voices and personal lived realities. The topics discussed in the content of blogs cut across public and private life, testifying to a need to move away from ideological conceptualisations of public engagement that delegitimise women's participation in the public sphere. It also makes a case for the reconsideration of the terms "public" and "politics" and what counts as both in a technologically dynamic society in which marginalised groups are continuing to explore alternative avenues for communication and self-expression.

Includes bibliographic references (leaves 88-91). / Whisperers, Feasts and Florence Nightingales: A Collection of Narrative LiteraryJournalism comprises three pieces of narrative literary journalism and one essay oftheoretical analysis.

Fallists belong to a constellation of radical student activist movements that pledge to disturb and reimagine South African society. Rather than restricting themselves to coordinated forms of collective action, Fallists’ advance their “revolution-as-becoming” within a context of everyday resistance (Haynes & Prakash, 1991; Molefe, 2015). In this dissertation, I propose that Fallists form an “emerging networked counterpublic” made up of individual activists that enact everyday forms of resistance on Twitter (Jackson & Foucault Welles, 2016:399). This dissertation explores the use of Twitter by a microblogger who has emerged organically as a “crowdsourced elite” among Fallists (Papacharissi & de Fatima Oliveira, 2012). I contend that this microblogger exemplifies the repertoires of communication and resistance that pervade within Fallist networks on Twitter (Jackson & Foucault Welles, 2016). The microblogger is identified through methods of observation and social network analysis (SNA). “#whitetip,” a Twitter hashtag network that exemplifies Fallist communication and resistance, informs the interpretive content analysis that follows. This analysis is conducted on the tweets that the microblogger broadcast between 1 April and 30 September 2016. Tweets are categorised according to “evaluative frames” that emerged inductively during the course of analysis. I find that “resentment,” “pride and care,” and “play” made up the vast majority of evaluative frames. The microblogger employs the platform in a manner that disturbs dominant understandings of public sphere communication: the microblogger’s tweets are evaluative rather than deliberative, and assert a marginal, embodied subjectivity (Papacharissi, 2014; Warner, 2002).

Includes bibliographical references. / This research is towards the advancement of filmosophy as a progressive new approach to how we think about, and through, film. This explorative research aims to introduce, contextualise, and expand upon the thoughts and writings of Daniel Frampton, as found in his 2006 manifesto: Filmosophy. In order to provide a suitable platform from which to introduce Frampton’s contemporary concepts (i.e. ‘filmind’ and ‘fluid film-thinking’), this paper first outlines and discusses the various ways in which philosophy and film are said to overlap, culminating in a critical discussion of ‘film-as-philosophy’ in terms of the implications it posits for providing innovative philosophical contributions through uniquely cinematic means (the ‘problem of paraphrase’). This literature review concludes by presenting and discussing filmosophy and its major tenets as both an appropriate extension of the current canon, and as a potentially productive new paradigm through which both film and philosophy can be critically considered and advanced.