The woman who accused Zwelinzima Vavi of rape :a media analysis of eight South African newspapers
- Authors: Timse, Tabelo Veronica
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Rape -- South Africa -- Case studies Sexual abuse victims -- South Africa , Mass media criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/45311 , vital:38569
- Description: The focal point of this study is to examine the print and online media representations of Jacqueline Phooko,a woman who accused former Cosatu General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi of rape. Data for this study was obtained from eight South African newspapers and their websites. The study investigates whether the articles under review, including commentary and discussion online, focused on the incident itself or on the political landscape of South Africa. A content analysis was used to examine the data revelaling that Phooko was underrepresented and that most articles focused on Vavi’s political career. The research will use a feminist perspective to show that Phooko was under-represented in the media, in comparison to Vavi and his supporters who gained greater coverage, specifically in a political context. The significance of the findings is that although there are some strides achieved to have more women voices in the media however women are still under-represented.
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- Date Issued: 2016
The best a man can get? : an analysis of the representation of men within group situations in the advertising copy of Men’s Health and FHM from December 2006 through May 2007
- Authors: Scott, Robert James
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Men's health (Magazine) , For Him Magazine (South Africa) , Men in advertising , Sex role in advertising , Discrimination in the advertising industry , Men in mass media , Mass media criticism , Men in popular culture , Sex role in mass media , Discourse analysis -- Social aspects , Masculinity -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3535 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013576
- Description: This study examines the production of masculinity in the advertisements of South Africa’s two most popular men’s lifestyle magazines, FHM and Men’s Health. I specifically focus on advertisements, as I argue that they play a crucial role in the re‐production of prominent discursive formations. Informed by a poststructuralist framework this study adopts Foucault’s notions of discourse, power and the constitution of the subject. Gender is conceived of within power relations, with a hierarchical relationship between masculinities and femininities. The gendered subject is also viewed as being constantly in process and being constructed performatively through material forms of practice. Focusing on group representations to establish gender hierarchies, I argue that these representations of people are performative acts, hailing the subjects who view them and producing reality through discourse. Hegemonic masculinity, which is argued to be prominent in advertising, is located at the highest point in the gender hierarchy. However, there is not one universal hegemonic masculinity, for it can vary across three discrete political contexts: the local, which is constructed in the immediate face‐to‐face interactions of families, organisations and social structures; the regional, which is constructed at the level of culture or the nation state; and the global, which is constructed in supra‐national locations. In the advertisements of FHM and Men’s Health there is interplay between the latter two as global and regional brands both advertise in these magazines. To investigate the portrayal of masculinities in these publications, this study first undertakes a content analysis to survey the “general landscape” of representation in the advertisements and then performs a critical discourse analysis to uncover “thick description” of the production of masculinity. The content analysis, finds that the advertisements in the sample validate both white and heterosexual forms of masculinity. The sample is comprised mostly of white males, white females and black males, generally proposing forms of hegemonic masculinity, emphasised femininity and complicit masculinity respectively. The representation of white males and black males is different both in terms of the frequency of representations and in the types of representations. I argued that a certain tension inhabits the resulting representations, which try to be inclusive of a multi‐racial South Africa, yet do so within a clearly hierarchical structure. An in‐depth analysis of eight texts, informed by Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis and Kress & van Leeuwen’s framework for visual analysis, finds similar results to the content analysis while providing insight into how various discourses produced the representations, particularly within non‐narrative advertisements.
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- Date Issued: 2014