Vol 26, No 1 (2007)

This article engages with the Lacanian tradition of film theory in order to suggest some of the ways
in which music in film may be understood to contribute significantly to subject identification in filmic
experience. Two points are argued: 1) that Lacan’s distinction between the three orders - the Real,
the Imaginary and the Symbolic - may usefully be understood in musical terms, and, 2) that the
two vectors of Lacan’s graphe complet – the vector of speech and the vector of drive – provide
meaningful insight into the manner in which the three orders shape filmic musical experience.
Analysis of Miklos Rosza’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) serves to illustrate such
insights.

A prerequisite for a healthy, sustainable democracy is an informed citizenry that participates in
the democratic process (see Habermas, 1989:49). In recent years much discourse on the media
and democracy correlation has focused on the potential role of the Internet in facilitating political
communication by establishing a virtual public sphere.
This article investigates the extent to which the South African (IEC) and Canadian electoral
commissions’ websites have succeeded in establishing a virtual public sphere. The Elections
Canada web site (representing an established democracy) has succeeded better at resembling
some of the normative principles of the public sphere theory than has the IEC.

The saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is relevant in the use of attractive and credible
celebrities in advertisements. A celebrity endorser is seen as a model who enjoys recognition from
the public and who can be seen as an ubiquitous feature of marketing today. The use of celebrity
endorsers is a fairly common practice in many organisations in supporting their corporate or
brand image.
This article focuses on both the attractiveness and also the credibility of celebrities in advertisements.
It is anticipated that attractive celebrities and credible celebrities could influence attitudes positively,
and that this will eventually lead to the purchasing of the advertised products and services.
O’Mahony and Meenaghan’s (1997/1998) Perceptions of Celebrity Endorsements Scale was used
to measure the overall attitudes of students on celebrity endorsements. Separate sets of items
were developed to measure attractive and credible celebrities separately. The internal consistency
reliability of these measurement scales reflected high scores (α > 0.70) on all items.
In general, the respondents positively perceived celebrity endorsements. However, the overall
rating of respondents in respect of an attractive celebrity in an advertisement was decidedly more
unfavourable. Results also showed attitudes towards credible celebrity endorsements to be neither
positive nor negative

Effective communication processes that include and invite audience participation are crucial for
quality health care in a country. In South Africa the importance of this has been an issue of
considerable discussion and debate. Critics have pointed out that many of the printed health
messages and health communication campaigns that use the printed medium in South Africa are
ineffective. To a great extent this failure is ascribed to the lack of audience involvement in the
development and production of such messages.
This article reports on an investigation undertaken to examine the extent of this problem. The
processes used to develop and produce printed mass media health communication messages in
South Africa are investigated by means of an in-depth exploration of the literature discussing and
evaluating the production of health messages. This is complemented by an empirical exploration
of selected printed messages covering a wide range of issues.
Little evidence was found in the study of the reciprocal nature of communication where producers
and communicators of health messages engage in sustained dialogue with their target audiences.
The conclusion is drawn that audience participation is not the norm in the production processes
of printed mass media health messages in South Africa.

The nature of HIV/Aids media coverage has been widely criticised, mainly by interest groups. This
has resulted in constructive, though somewhat fragmented, guidelines on ethically acceptable,
accountable HIV/Aids reporting. In this article the analysed and systematically summarised
guidelines (Swanepoel, 2005:77-137) are used to evaluate HIV/Aids reporting in three South
African Sunday papers. It was found that these newspapers partially meet the interest group
criteria. They raise awareness satisfactorily, but agenda setting could be improved. Although there
is comprehensive coverage of HIV/Aids issues, critical, in-depth reporting is lacking. Furthermore,
there is an exaggerated focus on HIV/Aids politics, and too little on relevant scientific and social
issues. A lack of alternative angles and a tendency towards sensationalism are noticeable. The
three papers often emphasise the “victim image”, and fail to use HIV/Aids-sensitive language
consistently. In respect of accuracy, there are deficiencies in the use of news source

A public broadcaster is pulled in two directions: There is the need to be accountable to the public,
and the imperative to be editorially independent at the same time. The first implies parameters
and control systems; the second points to the need for autonomy. This distinctive tension marks
out a key difference between public and private broadcasting (through the public accountability
component), and between public and government-controlled broadcasting (through the editorial
independence proviso). Several dimensions can be identified in regard to assessing accountability
and editorial independence, and also to the way that policy can work to integrate these two
apparently contradictory imperatives. In 2004, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)
was required in effect to mediate the complex challenges in this tension by formulating detailed
editorial policies and systems. The significance of the SABC experience also extends to understanding
the nature of policy more broadly

The South African social transition was accompanied by widespread media reform. Community
radio stations were for the first time, set up to empower communities previously without access to
the media. More than a hundred radio stations were licensed, and further provision was made for
community television, even if it was nearly a decade later before there was any discernible movement
in the area of community television. The paper addresses concerns about media, politics and identity
struggles, viewed through the lens of community radio. While there is a wealth of literature analysing
the development of various aspects of the South African media over the last decade, few, if any,
studies specifically consider the role of community media. Set up after elections in 1994, expressly
to create spaces for the articulation of marginal or “disadvantaged” groups, the community radio
sector in South Africa has mushroomed, with nearly a hundred stations currently licensed.
This paper will explore the ways in which community radio has facilitated the construction of new
identities. Adopting a case-study approach, the paper considers community radio station Bush
Radio, discussing how the station interpellates diverse identities through its programming. In the
Pink, for example, creates a space for the articulation of various gay identities, while the Children’s
Radio Education Workshop becomes a mediated space for youth in the new political dispensation
to form a generational consciousness. The intersection of class, culture and language at Bush
Radio, and on its airwaves, often results in the constant (re)negotiation of identities.
Furthermore, the paper also reflects on the religious or community-of-interest community radio
stations, and argues that these stations further serve the purpose of identity building. The resultant
listener loyalty results in increased sustainability; they serve the purpose of therapy or confession,
giving listeners an outlet for frustrations; and finally, religious community radio stations become
a virtual church, transcending physical boundaries and resulting in instantaneous religious
community building.

This paper, based upon a field research project commissioned by the Panos Institute Southern
Africa, investigates the communicative efficacy of the radio listening clubs project implemented
by the Institute in Malawi and Zambia. The investigation takes the form of a ‘second-order
interpretation’ of the key findings of the field research. The findings are analysed in terms of the
participatory communication model of development communication. The paper argues that the
clubs live up to some of the ideal-typical attributes of participatory communication. This is evident
in the following areas: (i) a propensity for social mobilisation; (ii) acquisition of skills and knowledge;
(iii) communally induced motivation to listen to the radio; (iv) the possibility of interpersonal influence
within groups; (v) the benefit of being ‘organised’ structures; (vi) the ‘massive’ reach of the clubs;
and (vii) the dialogic interchanges between the rural-based groups and the urban-based policymaking elites.