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efforts to educate the public, with some pundits suggesting that government communications strategies have largely been outdated and thus resisted by audiences (Treffry-Goatley, Mahlinza & Imrie, 2013).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.

This pilot study consists of two parts. The first part investigates the extent to which the domestic electricity consumers intend to use and use energy efficiently using the Theory of Planned Behaviour. The second part investigates the extent to which the Energy @ Home educational intervention changed the domestic electricity consumers’ behaviour. For the first part of the study an advertisement was published and a convenience stratified sample of 61 domestic electricity consumers were selected from the 290 respondents. Data was collected from the domestic electricity consumers via a questionnaire and a telephone response log. The co-relational research design was used to investigate the relationship between the predictor variables the independent variables in the constructs of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Simple linear regression analysis resulted in F statistic for the predicted behavioural intention was 29.74 with a p value less than 0.0001 which indicates significant statistical evidence of a linear relation between the predictor variables and the independent variables. The r2 of 0.87 implies that data points that fall closely along the best fit line. Therefore the predictor variables were good predictors of the response variable. All the participants that intended to use electricity efficiently confirmed via the telephone that they were using electricity efficiently. In the second part of the study 11 out of the 61 participants were chosen to participate in the Energy @ Home educational intervention and television program. Data was collected via the Energy audit log and the electricity consumption log. The participants intended to save between 2% and 35% of their electricity consumption and the actual electricity consumption savings were between 2% and 30%. / Science and Technology Education / M. Sc. (Mathematics, Physics & Technology Education (Physics Education))

Text in Afrikaans / Psychology / D.Litt. et Phil (Psychology)

Text in Afrikaans / Psychology / D.Litt. et Phil (Psychology)