The role of the police is a fundamental one in any society and in South Africa this role is beset with a unique set of challenges which are organisational, institutional, operational, individual and political in nature. It is these I address by means of examining the South African Police Service from the perspective of the praxis, process, means and methods of a working private investigator in contemporary South Africa. My method in this undertaking is a journalistic one in which I use the narrative techniques of dialogue, description, pacing and reflection to bring to life the stories and characters of police officers; ex-police officers; private investigators; victims of crime and perpetrators of crime in order to bring to light some of the more pressing issues with regard to crime and its prevention in contemporary South African society. This lends drama and suspense to a non-fiction narrative and also involves the reader in such a way that they respond to and engage with the subject matter on a personal level, thereby evoking their own thoughts and feelings on the spectre of crime in South Africa and what the SAPS variously is, isn’t or could be doing about it.

This paper is a reflective essay supporting the documentary film Odd Number and aims to clarify and create more depth for the reader around the film's successes and failures in representing Rashaad Adendorf. Rashaad was formerly an assassin for a feared gang but is now a redeemed family man. His life is explored through interviews with him, his victims, his family and his enemies. Re-enactments of his most significant life changing events are used to inform the audience. A film representing Rashaad's life inevitably raises questions around representation and the filmmaker's relationship with Rashaad. The essay concludes that a weakness of Odd Number is its lack of self-reflexivity and lack of showing the filmmaker's process and bias. The paper identifies that the key strength of the film is the relationship and friendship between Rashaad and the filmmaker and how that influences the process of making the film. The paper concludes that through Odd Number, Rashaad has claimed agency, not only to rebuild or redeem his own life, but to work to improve the lot of the community. The paper argues that this is the best possible legacy Odd Number could leave. The film and reflective essay demonstrate that the relationship with the subject is of primary importance and that focussing on the process rather than the outcome can result in a more honest, albeit subjective portrayal of a subject from a different race, class and background to the filmmaker. Ideally the paper should be read after having watched, the documentary Odd Number. It is important to note that the author of this paper is also the director of Odd Number. This paper is therefore not an analysis of somebody else's work, but a set of reflections by the director on his own work. The paper therefore communicates in the first person, aswell as the third person from time to time.

The number of brands using Instagram as a branding tool is steadily rising and so too is the rate of brand related consumer Interactions on social media. The sociocultural shifts in behavioural norms on Instagram have facilitated an increase in social word-of mouth that is surpassing traditional media advertising as the primary influence on consumers' purchase decisions. This revolution in Instagram marketing has facilitated the development of the Instagram Economy. This research aims to draw actionable insights into the South African Instagram Economy, which brand managers can use to inform their Instagram marketing strategies in order to leverage the economic capabilities of this platform. In order to draw actionable insights the study focused on each of the three main role players of the Instagram Economy: brands, Instagram influencers and consumers. The method of research for each of these three components of study was: a case study of a brand Instagram account, a quantitative content analysis of Instagram influencers' brand sponsored posts and lastly a closed, fixed response consumer questionnaire which prospective respondents could voluntarily participate in. This research identified that in order to develop successful brand presence on Instagram and increase the rate of brand related Instagram interactions that influence consumer purchase decisions, brands need to develop the right content for their target audience, partner with influencers that match the brand's values and know their audience's Instagram usage habits in order to reach them effectively.

This project investigates the employment of new media technologies toward anarchistic revolutionary purposes in three postmodern texts: Williams S. Burroughs’s Nova Trilogy, Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, and Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles. Spanning over three decades, these texts examine the continuous need for anarchist organizations to develop new and generative practices of resistant tactics against authoritarian hegemonic forces in order to remain relevant. This thesis explores how media technologies are used by these anarchist groups in order to break both the body and technology out of instrumentalizing purposes by apparatuses of control. In developing new embodiments that exist beyond the categorizations of power and authority, these authors demonstrate ways in which anarchist organizations are able to subvert the increasingly networked machinations of control and create potential embodied sites of resistance outside the realm of domination.

The Streetscapes Project is a photographic and journalistic documentation of ten street-based people's stories from Cape Town, South Africa. The subjects of the project are employed by Khulisa Social Solutions, a non-profit organisation (NPO) that adopts a systemic approach to breaking the cycle of crime and poverty. Streetscapes falls under two of the NPO's eleven programmes, i.e. the offender rehabilitation & reintegration programme and the diversion programme, and includes five social enterprises with the urban garden project in Roeland Street, Cape Town, being one of it. Through narratives and research this project shows how street-based people are highly motivated to work and rebuild their lives, and that having a job means more than simply earning an income to them – it provides them with self-worth, dignity and a source of hope. Beyond the documentation of their personal stories the project also explores the larger structural and systemic barriers surrounding the broader issue of homelessness in the city, including access to shelter services, among others. Ultimately, this project aims to debunk stereotypes about street-based people and enlighten the public about the challenges they face when living on the streets.

Thesis advisor: Kenneth A. Lachlan / The enormous growth in the last ten years, specifically in the field of 24-hour, all-access media, has caused several things; the rise of technology may be one of the greatest contributors, and it may best be demonstrated by the rise and use of interactive media in recent years. In traditional forms, the media has been relatively successful in creating an agenda of topics which, while not necessarily telling people what to think, they do create an arena for discussion. Interactive, all-access control, though, has changed how people consume media, and this study attempts to see if it has affected the agenda-setting ability of media. Recent media coverage of the correlation between Baseball and Steroids has not swayed public opinion away from other issues. This study will attempt to understand how changes in media consumption affect the basic tenets of media theory. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2006. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Communication. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

The principal research question of this study is framed as: Do prevailing, industrially and politically sourced definitions of Digital Exhibition faithfully represent the phenomenon's position within the contemporary media theory framework? Within this work Digital Exhibition is defined as: The practice of presenting moving images, either live or pre-recorded, to paying audiences, in public spaces, by means of digital distribution and projection. The majority of established literatures concerning Digital Exhibition are aimed at producing categorical definitions of the phenomenon. These 'meaning making' discourses commonly stem from potentially ideologically affected sources. To address this issue, the author has investigated the political economy of key commentators, and Digital Exhibition has been impartially researched following a 'case studies' methodology; with an analytical framework based upon a series of 'plausible rival hypotheses'. These hypotheses include that Digital Exhibitionism is: • a form of the cinema • a form of television • a new (new media) medium • multiple media • not a medium. It is presented that each investigated hypothesis can be argued to be legitimate when employing established media theories as the means of rationalisation. Nevertheless, the author concludes that individual industrially/politically charged definitions still do not provide an adequately comprehensive account as to the wealth of interpretations that can be drawn for Digital Exhibition. The author also presents his own perspective as to the subjective nature of contemporary media taxonomies, and ultimately proposes that Digital Exhibition is not a medium, but is a designation offered to a subjectively defined collection of events made possible through the transmission of computational binary pulse signals.

This thesis applies a feminist theoretical perspective to interrogate discourses of postfeminism, as well as the position of the female body, fitness, and resistance within contemporary American culture. I argue that women’s fitness blogs are a vehicle for the production of Rosalind Gill’s “postfeminist sensibility,” focusing specifically on fitness bloggers’ use of self-surveillance and monitoring, personal transformation or “makeovers”, and intensified consumerism. Using ideological textual analysis of several fitness blogs as case studies, I examine the ways in which women publicly negotiate their relationships with their body through the documentation and disclosure of their food and exercise lifestyles. This thesis also acknowledges the feminist potential of fitness blogs as spaces in which women may strive towards body positivity and recovery from eating disorders, as well as challenge cultural expectations regarding female body and appetite. / text

Media play an important role in transmitting information for citizens in a country as large as Canada. Much of what Canadians know about the larger country comes to them through the media they view. What then, is the information that media carries forward. How do the media depict political movements and political actors who are not politicians? This thesis explores the implications of media coverage for feminist organizations in Canada, using as a case study media’s response to the cuts to the Status of Women Canada by the Harper government in the fall of 2006. This analysis specifically focuses on the image of feminism created in media and the importance (or lack thereof) communicated by media about such organizations. / Thesis (Master, Political Studies) -- Queen's University, 2007-10-23 20:03:09.21

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