Medgar Evers was gunned down in front of his home in June 1963, a murder that went unpunished for almost thirty years. Assassinated at the height of the civil rights movement, Evers is a relatively untreated figure in either popular or academic writing. This dissertation includes three themes. Evers's death defined his life, particularly his public role. The other two themes define his relationship with the press in Mississippi (and its structure), and his relationship to the various civil rights organizations, including his employer, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Was the newspaper press, both state and national, fair in its treatment of Evers? Did the press use Evers to further the civil rights agenda or to retard that movement, and was Evers able to employ the press as a public relations tool in promoting the NAACP agenda? The obvious answers have been that the Mississippi press editors and publishers defended segregation and that Evers played a minor role in the civil rights movement. Most newspaper publishers and editorial writers slanted the news to promote segregation but not all newspapers editors. The Carters of Greenville, J. Oliver Emmerich of McComb and weekly editors Ira Harkey and Hazel Brannon Smith denounced the segregationist groups. Evers, too, is not easily defined. His life's work produced few results but his mere presence in the most racist state in the country provided other civil rights organizers with an example of personal strength and fortitude unmatched in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The dissertation reviewed the existing primary and secondary source material, and included personal interviews with primary participants in the Jackson boycotts of 1963. Evers compares with Abraham Lincoln in that both received little credit for their accomplishments until more than thirty years after their assassinations. Both represented the democratic philosophy of the common man's ability to achieve deeds not possible in a caste system.

Housing delivery has been in a state of crisis long before the realisation of democracy in South Africa and still remains a point of contention for the poor. Issues of service delivery, particularly housing delivery, have consistently made newspaper headlines in post-apartheid South Africa. Between 2004 and 2012, service delivery protests increased from 34% in 2005 to 173% in 2012. The City Press, a weekly newspaper, focused on the coverage of issues of development in South Africa, emerging as an important voice in reporting on citizen action related to service delivery in the country during this time. Therefore, the principal objective of this study was to investigate the City Press representation of citizen action on housing delivery in South Africa between 2005 and 2015. With a view to providing insight into the role of the media in development, this study employed qualitative research methodology. Qualitative content analysis was utilised in studying the City Press editorials and the City Press individual journalist’ opinion pieces and the newspaper news reports. In addition, past and present City Press journalists identified with reporting on developmental issues were interviewed. The development communication theory was explored as an appropriate theoretical framework for this study, The investigation of the City Press representation of citizen action on housing delivery found that there were several complex issues and processes that negatively impacted the process of housing delivery during the second decade of South African democracy, including a scourge of corruption driven by inefficiencies administration of the housing delivery process. In that respect the study revealed that housing delivery has been hindered by many aspects, resulting in tensions and a strained relationship between the government and the poor citizens of South Africa. Furthermore, the study established that the City Press individual journalists played a significant role in the representation of citizen action through portraying housing delivery protests at key moments when these happened. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication)

This qualitative study addresses how the Dallas Morning News and Al Día reporters and editors determine what type of news related to the Dallas Latino and Hispanic communities gets covered. It also looks into how and why each newspaper tackles the coverage of these communities. Through a systematic analysis of 8 in-depth interviews and a 6-month ethnography, the findings of this study suggest that Latino and Hispanic journalists in Dallas feel the Latino and Hispanic communities are regarded as the "other." This study suggests the newsroom's hegemony and its news production routines influence the way Latino and Hispanic communities are covered in Dallas, and the way Latino and Hispanic reporters and editors who primarily cover these communities are treated. Though the newsrooms have made an effort to diversity its staff, reporters and editors claim they still have a long way to go before the staff accurately represents the large Hispanic and Latino population in the city.

This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyse the coverage of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan’s two major English-language newspapers – The Japan Times and The Daily Yomiuri. Quantitative coding is combined with critical discourse analysis to determine whether the coverage was, overall, predominantly alarming, reassuring, or relatively balanced and neutral. This is done to ascertain whether the newspapers were sensationalising the crisis, echoing the official government and industry communication thereof, or reporting in a critical, responsible manner as the fourth estate. To answer the research question, key aspects of the coverage like foci, framing, sources, narratives, actors and agency, and criticisms are closely examined. It is revealed that the coverage was neither predominantly alarming nor reassuring, but was problematic in other ways. The implications of the complex findings, both for the Japanese media industry and international disaster reporting, are discussed. The study is situated in a broad literature framework that draws on agenda setting theory, research about the roles and responsibilities of the media, the field of risk communication and the reporting of radiation events in history. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)

The apartheid state was vulnerable to the opposition of the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) on two fronts. From 1967 universal white male conscription was introduced, and progressively increased until 1984. This indicated the growing threat to the apartheid state from regional decolonisation which offered bases for the armed liberation movement. From 1977 a policy of "reformed apartheid" attempted to contain internal black opposition through socio-economic upliftment, but the failure of this containment intensified the need for military coercion. Minority conscription created an ongoing manpower challenge, which the ECC exacerbated by making the costs of conscription explicit, thus encouraging non-compliance and emigration. Secondly, the National Party used a security discourse to promote unity among whites, offsetting both its conscription demands and its decreased capacity to win white political support through socio-economic patronage. After the formation of the Conservative Party in 1982, the state faced conflicting demands for stability from the right, and for reform from the left. The ECC's opposition intensified these political differences, and challenged conscription on moral grounds, particularly the internal deployment of the SADF after 1984. Through its single-issue focus the ECC was able to sidestep divisions which plagued existing anti-apartheid opposition, uniting a variety of groups in national campaigns between 1984 and 1988. Since it could not afford to accommodate the ECC's demands, and in view of growing white acceptance of aspects of the ECC's opposition, the state repressed the ECC to limit its public impact. By 1988 - in a climate of growing white discontent around the material and personal costs of conscription, economic decline, political instability and conscript deaths in Angola - the ECC's call for alternatives to military conscription encouraged a broader range of anti-conscription sentiment, prompting the state to ban it. / History / M.A. (History)

This study explores the representation of crime in the news in relation to expressed emotion and intention for future action. Episodic and thematic framing (Iyengar, 1991) and narrative processing (Singer & Bluck, 2001) served as the theoretical foundations of this study and helped examine how scripted news stories involving crime influence levels of fear, anger, and empathy in individuals, and how these emotions subsequently affect behaviors. To measure these framing effects, an experimental manipulation was employed using three conceptually different news stories all involving gun-related crimes. One news story utilized an episodic format, while the other two stories used a thematic format (one positive and one negative). Emotional responses, levels of narrative engagement, policy support, perceived risk of victimization, and pro-social behavioral intentions were measured, all based on exposure to the specific type of news frame. The results of this study indicated that while types of news frames did not have a direct effect on readers' emotions, there was a significant relationship between emotions and future actions. For example, fear, anger, and empathy were significant predictors of perceived risk of victimization, policy support, and pro-social behavioral intentions, respectively. These findings contribute to the understanding of the role emotions play in predicting behavior, both within and beyond the scope of message framing.

Thesis (MPhil (Journalism))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / Scientists predict that the Western Cape region of South Africa is likely to be one of the regions most affected by climate change. Though the effects on the Cape Floral Kingdom are a huge concern in terms of biodiversity, the effects of climate change are predicted to be far broader than the natural environment. Agriculture, industry, the health sector, politics and the socio-economic sectors among others are all likely to be significantly impacted by climate change in the coming years. The underlying theoretical assumption of the study is that understanding how the climate question has been understood and framed is of vital importance for how the general public will be able to respond to lifestyle changes in aid of climate protection.This study examines the media coverage of climate change over the period of one year in the Western Cape media context, specifically the Cape Times, the Cape Argus and Die Burger. Using a quantitative framing analysis as the central methodology, the study focused on six core frames in analysing all articles relating to climate change. In addition, journalists at the respective newspapers were interviewed to complement the textual analysis. Finally, climate change scientists were interviewed in order to gain their perspectives of the reporting. The study found that the environmental frame was the dominant frame chosen. The political and scientific frames were the next two most prominent frames. It is argued that the dominance of these frames and the comparative lack of reports featuring the human impact frame is problematic as the environment, science and politics are all fairly abstract to the general public.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Many questions have been asked as to why sub-Saharan Africa, and particularly South Africa, has such a high incidence of HIV/AIDS. While social and economic power imbalances between the sexes, coupled by the biological vulnerability of women, play an important role in the rapid spread of South Africa’s HIV/AIDS epidemic, what truly seems to set South Africa apart from the rest of the world is the high incidence of multiple or concurrent sexual relationships. Multiple or concurrent sexual relationships are defined as sexual partnerships that overlap in time, when one partnership starts before another terminates. These types of relationships have the potential to create complex sexual networks – commonly referred to as a “sexual superhighway” – for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, most notably HIV/AIDS. While the practice of multiple or concurrent sexual relationships is to a large extent under-reported by the South African media, a great deal of media attention is given to President Jacob Zuma’s practice of polygamy as a Zulu cultural tradition. The researcher proposes that Zuma’s intimate partnerships stray from the well-defined parameters of cultural polygamy and that he does, in fact, has multiple or concurrent sexual relationships that fall outside the boundaries of polygamy. The researcher further proposes that the example set by the President in his personal life has an effect on the general morality of the South African people and especially on women’s status in society. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Baie vrae is al gevra oor hoekom sub-Sahara Afrika, en spesifiek Suid-Afrika, so ʼn hoë voorkoms van MIV/Vigs het. ʼn Sosiale en ekonomiese magswanbalans tussen mans en vroue, tesame met die verhoogde biologiese kwesbaarheid van vroue vir seksueel-oordraagbare siektes, speel ʼn rol in die vinnige verspreiding van die MIV/Vigs epidemie in Suid-Afrika maar wat ons blykbaar onderskei van die res van die wêreld is die hoë voorkoms van veelvuldige of samelopende seksuele verhoudings. Veelvuldige of samelopende seksuele verhoudings word gedefinieer as verhoudings wat oorvleuel of waar een verhouding begin voordat ʼn vorige verhouding beëindig is. Hierdie tipe verhoudings het die potensiaal om komplekse seksuele netwerke te vorm – algemeen beskryf as “seksuele super-snelweë” – waarbinne seksueel-oordraagbare siektes, insluitende MIV/Vigs, vinnig kan versprei. Terwyl veelvuldige of samelopende seksuele verhoudings min aandag geniet in die Suid-Afrikaanse media, is daar wel ʼn fokus op President Jacob Zuma se uitlewing van sy Zulu-tradisie van poligamie. Die navorser stel egter voor dat Zuma se intieme verhoudings afwyk van die goedge-definieerde riglyne van kulturele poligamie en dat hy in werklikheid eerder veelvuldige of samelopende seksuele verhoudings het wat buite die reëls van poligamie val. Die navorser stel verder voor dat die voorbeeld wat die President in sy persoonlike lewe stel ʼn uitwerking het op die moraliteit van Suid-Afrikaners en veral op die status van vroue in die samelewing.

The apartheid state was vulnerable to the opposition of the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) on two fronts. From 1967 universal white male conscription was introduced, and progressively increased until 1984. This indicated the growing threat to the apartheid state from regional decolonisation which offered bases for the armed liberation movement. From 1977 a policy of "reformed apartheid" attempted to contain internal black opposition through socio-economic upliftment, but the failure of this containment intensified the need for military coercion. Minority conscription created an ongoing manpower challenge, which the ECC exacerbated by making the costs of conscription explicit, thus encouraging non-compliance and emigration. Secondly, the National Party used a security discourse to promote unity among whites, offsetting both its conscription demands and its decreased capacity to win white political support through socio-economic patronage. After the formation of the Conservative Party in 1982, the state faced conflicting demands for stability from the right, and for reform from the left. The ECC's opposition intensified these political differences, and challenged conscription on moral grounds, particularly the internal deployment of the SADF after 1984. Through its single-issue focus the ECC was able to sidestep divisions which plagued existing anti-apartheid opposition, uniting a variety of groups in national campaigns between 1984 and 1988. Since it could not afford to accommodate the ECC's demands, and in view of growing white acceptance of aspects of the ECC's opposition, the state repressed the ECC to limit its public impact. By 1988 - in a climate of growing white discontent around the material and personal costs of conscription, economic decline, political instability and conscript deaths in Angola - the ECC's call for alternatives to military conscription encouraged a broader range of anti-conscription sentiment, prompting the state to ban it. / History / M.A. (History)

Este trabalho investiga elementos da narrativa jornalística contemporânea presentes na programação televisiva e discute o caráter híbrido das tecnologias da comunicação. A partir da análise de programas que retratam a tragédia acontecida na cidade de Santa Maria em janeiro de 2013,são utilizadas bases semióticas e analíticas no intuito de compreender referenciais comuns pelos quais esse tipo de comunicação opera na transmissão de suas mensagens e pontos de vista acerca do real. Traz como resultado a comprovação dos usos dessas estratégias de representação desses dentro do recorte analisado, o que serve como evidência da constante reafirmação de discursos generalistas a respeito dos fenômenos sociais, reeditados em novas bases tecnológicas. / This work investigates elements of contemporary journalistic narrative present in television programming and discusses the hybrid character of communication technologies . From the analysis of programs that depict the tragedy that took place in the city of Santa Maria in January 2013,semiotic and analytical bases are used in order to include common reference by which this type of communication operates in the transmission of messages on reality . It brings as a result the evidences of representation strategies within the analyzed cut. The conclusion serves as evidence of the constant reaffirmation of general discourse about social phenomena, reissued in new technological basis.