Vol 37, No 2 (2018)

Problems of social transformation and inclusiveness are not just social problems, they are
also media communication problems; and they are not just South African problems they are
internationally shared. The same widening gap between rich and poor, the uneven and often
skewed benefits of globalisation, and political disruption all sit alongside and intersect with a
changing communication environment. While both our media content and our ways of paying
for media are stable, the ends they serve and the communication instruments to which they are
attached are mutating. In an era of connectivity, both social media and new content priorities are
recalibrating our understanding of media, producing both new uses for media and new regimes
of knowledge about media alike. Assessing the social and political significance of these changes
becomes all the more urgent when we consider that social transformation and inclusiveness will
increasingly need to work through these new communication settings.

This partly autoethnographical account of my experiences as an author, editor and researcher
offers an experiential framework with which to make sense of publishing in the contemporary
era, governed as it is by neoliberal managerialist principles that tend to reduce activities to
measureable units so as to render academic disciplines comparable. This is the context within
which Communicare is repositioning itself in communication and media studies, situated as it is
between positivist communication science and interpretivist critical theory. Historical elements of
the journal are examined via the author’s long-term association with it. The article ends with an
examination of the problems that scholarly work faces when universities measure finite products
at the expense of processes.

The lens of decolonisation invites the opportunity to reflect on the current mainstream views
regarding the purpose of the public university. A decolonized approach suggests that the key
tasks of a university (teaching, research and community engagement) should be socially
responsive. This conceptual article draws on a class project to suggest a way in which the three
tasks can be combined to respond so a particular social need. Against the foil of a class project -
situated in a larger Izindaba Zokudla (conversations about food) community engagement project
of the University of Johannesburg – this article argues: 1) instead of conventional teaching
methods, teaching should be based on an empowerment education model; 2) instead of a
top-down externally initiated model, community engagement should use a participatory multistakeholder
approach; and 3) instead of conventional research approaches, research should be
transformative. The article concludes, firstly that it is possible to integrate the teaching, research
and community engagement tasks of a public university productively, and secondly, it should
take as point of departure empowerment education, participatory community engagement, and
transformative research.

Within the field of intercultural communication, the position of theorist is adopted, to re-think
and reframe existing insights by creatively combining them in a more useful and holistic way,
towards intercultural communication effectiveness (congruence). More specifically, this paper is
premised on the view that intercultural communication awareness resulting from an understanding
of communication cultures of those in interaction can enable development of appropriate
strategies for enhancing intercultural communication effectiveness (ICE). Thus, with reference
to the Sino-African cultural context, a synthesis of literature on culture and communication in
Western, African, and Chinese cultures on the basis of a conceptual framework for intercultural
communication effectiveness is conducted. The result is a framework reflecting potential synergies
and differences in communication culture and patterns, while also suggesting low culture distance
between African and Chinese culture. A higher culture distance is reported when African and
Chinese cultures are compared to Western cultures. Patterns of similarity and difference in African
and Chinese communication culture are also presented. This paper contributes to the limited
knowledge of intercultural communication in Sino-African interactions by providing insights into
African communication culture and comparing three cultures (Chinese, African, and Western).

This review analyses research uptake methods which have been used by researchers in sub-
Saharan Africa to determine which methods are effective for communities. The key area of the
study is research uptake methods applicable at rural community level. The study analyses how
effective these methods are in getting research findings adopted by the community, stirring
behaviour change and raising awareness about a problem. The review makes recommendations
for research projects that seek to conduct research uptake in the rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
A systematic search for articles was done using Medline, PubMed and Google Scholar. Articles
on the uptake of eco-health research findings at a community level were screened and analysed
using narrative synthesis. Results showed that strategies involving media, educational materials
and interpersonal communication with the communities worked most effectively. Some examples
of these were use of radio programmes, film productions, community theatre, field workers,
community meetings, educational programmes, peer education and point of care displays. The
study concluded that to enhance research uptake in communities, innovative methods which
capture the context of the communities involved need to be used. Selected strategies should use
the eco-health approach, engage the community and incorporate indigenous knowledge systems.

In many hip-hop music videos, women’s value is reduced to sensuous display of sexuality. As
a result visual pleasure is created through the representation of women as eager and willing
sexual objects. This article assesses the techniques and ways women are sexualised in South
African hip-hop music videos, and how their representation attempts to create visual pleasure
for those that consume these videos. Four critical elements are adopted from Laura Mulvey’s
seminal theoretical discourse about the positioning of women in narrative cinema, to study the
gender representation and sexual presentation of women in two popular South African hip-hop
music videos. The analysis reveals that appealing to the male gaze, processes of objectification,
gender division of labour and camera techniques are ways of presenting a sexualised spectacle
of women for the visual pleasure of male characters and audiences of the videos.

This paper examines the home as networked and relational. These arrangements of space
and place were investigated through a digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis of
domestically focused posts by 50 Facebook users. This data was supplemented by interviews,
and in-situ observations drawn from the broader sample. Facebook has opened up the private
space of the home, allowing domestic space, place, and practice to gain visibility, which, when
analysed in conjunction with Actor-Network Theory (ANT), illustrates the networked and relational
quality of the home. The home, and the relationships between actants, reflects discourses
and hierarchy. Women remain tightly bound to the home, and to postfeminist discourses of
domesticity and domestopia. This paper reveals that whiteness, and in particular madamhood,
is blackboxed within middle-class homes. Domestic workers employed by these households,
on the other hand, were largely absent from such narratives and conversations, and were
marginalised within networks.

This article proposes a new concept, co-change-orientated communication (co-COC), which
encapsulates the daily social and communication processes of organisational members in
making sense of change from a critical strategic communication perspective. Guided by an
evolutionary approach to concept development, this article aims to quantitatively measure the
pragmatic relevance of identified attributes and antecedents of co-COC to the development of
a fully-fledged concept at six high-change South African organisations. An exploratory factor
analysis confirmed that co-COC is attributed by meaningful dialogue, employee engagement,
collaboration and co-creation, and the encouragement of dissent. It is bottom-up in nature and
enabled by the antecedents of organisational agility, leadership agility, a change-able culture
and stakeholder engagement. Co-COC further extends theoretical development on the need for
change in approaches to communication that support ongoing organisational change and hasve
potential to assist communication professionals to recognise the need and pragmatic relevance of
contemporary developments in strategic communication. The various antecedents and attributes
of co-COC could also provide organisations with guidance on the implementation of changeorientated
communication approaches in support of ongoing organisational change.