Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-83). / The end-user 'piracy' of television series, particularly of those produced by USA television networks such as HBO, NBC, ABC and FOX, is a growing trend in South Africa. This paper aims to identify why South Africans want to view television series this way and contribute to the research recognising it as a significant trend in media consumption. The key questions that are examined in this paper include: Who are these individuals, what is their viewing behaviour and why? This paper thus examines the literature available surrounding the profile, the motivations, and the viewing patterns of these revolutionary series viewers.

The original idea behind Herald was to create a South African Downton Abbey (ITV and PBS, 2010 -2015). Historical television is currently popular and Downton is appealing because it communicates interesting history, finds comedy in the manners and behaviours of the day and indulges in the visual pleasures of opulent aristocratic society. A historical setting is as foreign and exciting as a fantasy realm but it can still provide a platform to explore themes that are relevant and familiar to a contemporary viewer. Members of local government, military officers and other nobles and wealthy Britons at the Cape lived aristocratic lives not unlike the fictional inhabitants of Downton and yet a wholesale pastiche of the structure of Downton or the conventions of the period drama genre is inappropriate. The racial tensions that have defined the colonial and postcolonial periods of South African history and the Eurocentric, androcentric approach to that history necessitate a new approach. It is with this in mind that I have attempted to create a television miniseries inspired by the traditional period drama and by Downton Abbey specifically, but remoulded by the contexts of past and present day South Africa. I had several main goals in mind for this miniseries: to provide South Africans with entertaining television that tells local stories and, in so doing, encourage South Africans to engage with their own history; to grapple with contentious issues of the present such as race, gender and land, by exploring the past; to place strong black, Malay and female characters at the center of history and give them the agency to effect history; to provide a critique of the British and their actions at the Cape.

Includes bibliographical references. / The Djinn is the final film in the series “Bunnychow Memoirs". This series consists of five feature films, three of which I wrote over the course of my Honours and Masters Degrees in English language and Literature and later, Masters in Film Theory and Practice. Two films in the series, namely “Babelgirl" and "Meatfood" were not written by me, but by Zinaid Meeran, but l shall mention them here so as to give a fuller description of the progression of the series. These films depict South African life within the 'Bunnychow Culture' spanning a period of three decades. The 'Bunnychow World‘ is a world in which traditional notions of identity are subverted and transcended. Race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality - all are turned on their heads in the realm of the Bunnychow. The films depict the experiences of a motley collection of young Muslims in South Africa, ranging from the early eighties to the beginning of the 21st century. Each film can and does stand alone, as a distinct entity, but all are linked by the common themes of the characters' identity struggles with race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity within the context of the massive and powerful entity that is Islam. The series is built on a progression and eventual resolution of the main themes, using as a vehicle the changing political, spiritual and social trends during these three decades, and the psychology of growing up of the characters. "P-I-G" is about a child's desire against politicised religious fanaticism. "The Concubine" handles forbidden teenage sexuality. “Babelgirl" (written by Zinaid Meeran) shows the attempted taming of a child's freedom from ethnicity, and a women's tussle with her own feminism. “Meatfood" (also by Zinaid Meeran) resolves the horror of racist alienation and psychological self destruction. Finally, "The Djinn" looks at the reconciliation of religious and personal identity through a magical spiritual freedom. In the case of "The Djinn" the relationship between a human and a djinn, and between the djinn world and the human world, catapults the thematic struggles of the previous films, into an otherworldly context. This process symbolises the ultimate subversion, and the final resolution of the themes. Moreover the motif of Bonanza Fruiterers, a takeaway specialising in bunnychow, and the brushing up of each of the protagonists with these bunnychows appears in each of the movies. The movies, in other words, are all linked by the same motif, primarily, the urgent, silly, celebrated cultural icon of the Bunnychow. This dish, essential to the South African urban experience, is of course, a half loaf of bread with the insides scooped out and the resulting cavity filled with curry, insanely hot and floating in oil.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation paper is a reflective essay supporting the documentary film From Namibia with Love (FNWL). The aim of this essay is to examine and analyse the production challenges, ethical considerations and the reconstruction of reality in the making of the film FNWL. The essay explores these issues from the director's and editor's point of view with special references to academics literature and different documentary films.

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.