Crime and punishment Mzansi style: an exploration of the discursive production of criminality and popular justice in South Africa’s Daily Sun
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Daily Sun (South Africa) , Tabloid newpapers -- South Africa , Crime in mass media , Justice in mass media , Police in mass media , Newpapers -- South Africa , Newpapers -- Objectivity -- South Africa , Women -- Violence against -- South Africa -- Press coverage , Witchcraft -- South Africa -- Press coverage , Police -- South Africa -- Press coverage
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/44419 , vital:25406
- Description: The highly popular South African tabloid the Daily Sun, established post-apartheid in 2002, is known for its sensationalist and controversial reporting of black township life. Read by over five million black working class readers, much of its reporting concerns the crimes experienced by them and their struggles for justice. The extraordinarily high rate of violent crime in township areas for which South Africa became infamous during the 1980s did not decrease as much as hoped after the political transition in 1994 and crime overshadowed the first decades of the new administration, adding to the frustrations generated by the slow pace of social and economic reform. Part of the Daily Sun’s success can be attributed to how, around these linked concerns, it fashions for its readers a particular discursive world, Sunland. It is the phatic relationship that the tabloid maintains between itself and its readers which forms the foundation upon which this textual study rests. In approaching the tabloid’s representations of crime I draw on cultural criminological understandings of crime as culture and the formative relationship in this regard between crime and the media. As a preeminent site of cultural production in contemporary society, the media contribute to the ongoing definition of what constitutes crime, who is criminal and what counts as justice. This constructivist approach is congruent with Foucault’s notions of discourse and the subject, and I argue that the various competing discourses about crime and justice which appear in the paper establish a set of subjectivities with which its readers may identity. The thesis explores the rhetorical and discursive means by which such subject positions are constructed within the ‘grid of intelligibility’ created by the Daily Sun’s reportage, and using the spatial metaphor of the ‘map’ I trace the contours of the Daily Sun’s domain with regard to crime and popular justice. To this end, the approach taken is a qualitative one which draws eclectically on a variety of interpretive methods, including semiotic, narrative and discourse analysis. Using these, I map the relations between People’s Justice, the police, gender relations and witchcraft crimes, four areas chosen from a broad thematic content analysis of the complete set of editions from 2011. I show how these are not discreet but co-constructed areas within the coverage, drawing their meaning mutually from a range of conflictual relationships derived from the conditions of post-apartheid social life.
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- Date Issued: 2017
The representation of the use of social media for committing cyber-crimes in selected South African newspapers
- Authors: Hewana, Sandiswa
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Computer crimes , Crime in mass media
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/6323 , vital:21073
- Description: This study aimed to provide insights into the manner in which the representation of social media usage in relation to cyber-related crimes within selected South African newspapers can potentially shape the ideas and perceptions that society may have towards social networking channels. Drawing on the literature from fields such as developmental studies, new media studies, identity formation and cyber-criminality, an analysis of the Price Water House Coopers Global Economic Survey (2011) was used to provide some insight into the issue of cyber-crime within South Africa. The survey which was conducted by Price Water House Coopers revealed that South Africa is ranked second in the world with the highest rate of reported fraud cases. According to them this rate is comparatively higher than the escalating percentage of cases reported in the United States and other nations. In order to correlate and illustrate some of the findings of the survey and that which was found through primary research, an in-depth content analysis applying limited designations analysis and detailed assertions analysis techniques (Du Plooy, 2007) has been performed on selected content from local print and online publications such as The Herald, Algoa Sun, The Weekend Post, The Sunday Times and News24, from the time period of January 2009 until January 2012. Herewith, a total of 125 articles were analysed in order to determine the tone and thematic nature of the communication within the respective platforms. Furthermore, the mass media has been argued as being the main platform of communication within society. Whereby, different communication techniques are used to communicate with different target audiences. On a theoretical level, the study explored whether or not social media perpetuates the prejudices of the modernisation theory or serves to challenge such prejudices. Furthermore, the study explored whether social media may potentially have an impact on the reported cyber-related crimes. Associated theory such as the representation theory, globalization, the privacy trust model, social contract theory, media richness theory, participatory theory, convergence, the digital divide, media-centricity, dependency and identity formation has been explored. It was found that social networking sites Facebook and Mxit have been represented as the most common platforms of cyber-related crime and women and teenagers are the most popular victims. The likelihood of individuals being exposed to cyber-crime within social networks is high due to the fact in order to develop online relationships, personal information needs to be shared. The Privacy Trust model was identified as being an important factor which shaped the findings of this study. This is due to the fact that a certain level of trust is held by social network subscribers to the Internet hosts who they entered into a social contract with and with their friends.
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- Date Issued: 2013