Tanja Bosch
Biographic Data
| ID | 217085 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tanja Bosch |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tanja |
| FAMILY NAME | Bosch |
| SIGNATURE | BOSCH T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8093-1969 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 109 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
AI Hype Through an African Lens
News media play a crucial role in shaping a public understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and influencing how society interacts with this technology, often contributing to AI hype. This is particularly significant in Africa, where unique socioeconomic dynamics and historical relationships with technology shape news discourse on AI. However, there is limited understanding of how African news media contribute to AI hype. To address this, thi…
A Twitter Obituary
Introduction As Twitter passes its twentieth anniversary, it does so amidst a profound reconfiguration of the communicative spaces it once anchored. For much of its history, Twitter functioned as a key site for public communication, enabling the formation of networked publics, issue publics, and ad hoc political conversations that extended the earlier mass-media models of the public sphere (Bruns and Highfield). These publics took multiple forms,…
Adoption and perceptions of generative AI among South African academics
This article analyses how South African academics use and perceive the usage of GenAI in Higher Education in South Africa. In the context of a highly unequal, multi-lingual society, there is a dire need to enable epistemological access for all students. Could artificial intelligence with its transformative potential offer solutions or alternatively compound the problem? The article is based on a thematic analysis of interviews with 16 academics f…
Running bodies, raced landscapes
This article examines how racialised belonging and digital self-tracking shape experiences of outdoor leisure in post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing on a critical autoethnography of trail running at a South African mountain marathon, it argues that mountain trails are socially produced leisure spaces structured by race, gender, class, and colonial histories of land and access. Using Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space alongside scholars…
From Adolescence to Adulthood
We live in a moment of profound digital transformation. The platforms, algorithms and networked infrastructures that shape everyday life are not neutral technologies – they are social, political and cultural environments that young people inhabit, navigate and reshape in ways that are only beginning to be understood. This Feature Topic of Media International Australia takes on that challenge, bringing together scholarship from an interdisciplinar…
The politics of privilege when hiking the South African wild coast
This paper explores some aspects of the contradictory and complex cultural politics of eco-tourism on foot in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, through an auto-ethnographic case study. Guided by a local Mpondo leader, we hiked the Wild Coast trail from Port St. Johns to Coffee Bay in March 2024. Over five days and 75 kilometres, this journey provided not only an intimate encounter with the natural beauty of the region but also glimpses into the liv…
Decolonisation is not a vibe
This paper argues that decolonisation in media and communication studies must be rooted in anti-capitalist praxis, not just symbolic critique. While the field increasingly gestures toward decoloniality through the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion, such moves often sidestep the material infrastructures, labour conditions, funding regimes and citation politics that structure how academic knowledge is produced. Drawing on critical scholarship fro…
PSB Radio and the Public Sphere in South Africa
This article explores public service broadcasting (PSB) radio in South Africa, focusing on SAfm. Using a mixed methods approach comprising a broadcast content analysis and social media textual analysis, the article uses theories of the public sphere and democratic listening to analyse the role of SAfm in the context of PSB broadcasting. The article focuses on the flagship breakfast show, analysing station content alongside tweets containing the h…
TikTok and memetic activism against racism in South Africa
This article explores TikTok users’ responses to a racist incident at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. We analyse the content strategies of TikToks that received the most engagement as well as a timeline of TikToks to analyse how the framing of the event shifted over time. We consider TikTok as a space for youth to reflect on everyday politics in highly personalized ways and to develop their voice and visibility through particular content s…
South African tabloid coverage of Covid19
Around the world, tabloid newspapers are routinely surrounded by a moral and cultural panic. They are criticised for lowering standards of journalism and privileging sensation above substance, diverting readers from serious news to entertainment, or foregoing ethical principles. However, scholarship about tabloids have also highlighted the ways in which these papers are frequently better attuned to their readers’ everyday lived experience. In Sou…
Networked masculinities in South Africa
The role of digitally mediated networked publics in the co-production and negotiation of contemporary masculinities has not been widely researched in an African context. This paper explores networked masculinities on South African Black Twitter via the hashtag #MensConference, a fictional conference organized by men as a humorous rejection of Valentine’s Day. Drawing on a critical thematic analysis of a selection of tweets through the lens of cri…
The Limitations of Hashtag Feminist Activism on South African Twitter
Social media has become a central arena for debates around feminism and gender in South Africa. One recent example can be found in the hashtag #MenAreTrash, which has been a trending topic multiple times on South African Twitter. However, despite the prevalence of gender-based violence in the country, these conversations have also come under strong criticism, especially from men. Existing literature on social media expressions of misogyny and ant…
Decolonizing Digital Methods
The rapid growth of the Internet and social media platforms has increasingly made these central focus areas for media scholars around the world. Within the context of the broader framework of the movement towards decolonizing media and communication studies, this growth of digital methods raises key questions including: How are digital methods in these contexts currently being used and how might scholars begin to think about “decolonizing” these …
South African newspaper coverage of Covid-19
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has led to unprecedented media coverage globally and in South Africa where, at the time of writing, over 20,000 people had died from the virus. This article explores how mainstream print media covered the COVID-19 pandemic during this time of crisis. The news media play a key role in keeping the public informed during such health crises and potentially shape citizens’ perceptions of the pandemic. Drawing on a cont…
Decolonising Digital Media Research Methods
This introductory essay argues for a decolonial approach that privileges qualitative methods in ways that position African digital experiences as “epistemic sites” of knowledge production in their own right in digital media scholarship. In proffering this argument, we challenge and confront elements of the global knowledge system, which are driven by an implicit “civilising mission” in which methods and intellectual approaches drawn from the West…
Facebook and politics in Africa
The potential for the Internet to play a role in political life, and the extension of the public sphere, has been widely documented. More specifically, social media has emerged as an arena of political communication, widely used by political parties for campaigning, and also by citizens to choreograph various forms of protest. In the African context, the growth of the mobile Internet has resulted in the rise of social media platforms, most notabl…
Television and Black Twitter in South Africa
This article examines Twitter use by audiences of the popular South African television show, Our Perfect Wedding. We argue that the show’s Twitter feed provides an extension of South Africa’s ‘Black Twitter’ facilitating a space for recognition and group identity for Black South African television viewers. Such a space is significant since Black audiences have been neglected in the short history of South African television broadcasting. On Our Pe…
African Feminist Media Studies
The media constitute social realities, meaning and power, and, in many developing states, are sites of social and political struggle. Political and economic developments in African media over the last two decades have led to significant media transformation, with, I would argue, a concurrent dearth of feminist media scholarship (see also Audrey Gadzekpo 2009). Media monitoring initiatives, such as the Global Media Monitoring Project, which has no…
Print media coverage of service delivery protests in South Africa
In recent years South Africa has seen an increase in 'service delivery protests' – protests related to the inadequate provision of services – as a result of growing citizen frustration resulting from high levels of economic inequality. Unemployment, housing, water and sanitation, electricity, corruption and municipal administration, health and crime, have all been listed as reasons for the protests, often described a 'rebellion of the poor'. Give…
Communication from above and below
Since the end of apartheid, there has been a steady rise in community protests in South Africa. Many of these protests – often cumulatively grouped under the rubric of 'service delivery protests' are not only about the delivery of basic services, but equally about the closing down of democratic/institutional space and process when communities try to raise issues related to services and corruption. If protests are a way for the poor and the margin…
Twitter activism and youth in South Africa
This article uses the South African student-led campaign known as Rhodes Must Fall, commonly referred to simply as #RMF, to explore youth activism and counter-memory via social networking site Twitter. The RMF campaign took place at the University of Cape Town and comprised student-led protests, which campaigned to remove the statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes, as activists argued that it promoted institutionalized racism and promote…
Questioning the media-democracy link
It is often assumed that a robust, free and independent media will contribute to the deepening of democracy by keeping governments accountable and broadening citizen participation in deliberative democratic debates. But in new democracies such as South Africa, the deepening and broadening of democratic participation is often curtailed by challenges such as unequal access to the media, the orientation of mainstream media towards elite audiences an…
Pictures, Protests and Politics
News media have often been criticised for framing social protests in negative ways, particular through photojournalism. While news photographs can shape the public's understanding of social and political events, research has shown that journalists often portray dramatic, violent or sensationalist images. This paper shifts the focus from mainstream news media, to explore how citizens themselves visually frame protests. The paper provides results f…
Participatory politics and citizen journalism in a networked Africa
"Participatory politics and citizen journalism in a networked Africa." Information, Communication & Society, 19(12), pp. 1704–1705
Talk radio, democracy and citizenship in (South) Africa
Pictures, Protests and Politics
News media have often been criticised for framing social protests in negative ways, particular through photojournalism. While news photographs can shape the public's understanding of social and political events, research has shown that journalists often portray dramatic, violent or sensationalist images. This paper shifts the focus from mainstream news media, to explore how citizens themselves visually frame protests. The paper provides results f…
Social Media and Community Radio Journalism in South Africa
Using a qualitative approach, this article explores South African community radio stations’ uses of the internet, particularly the online social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter. Specifically, it explores the extent to which these sites are used in news production, and whether there is an increase in organization on the basis of network sociality instead of identity politics or communal social relations. Focusing on three community radio st…
Print media coverage of service delivery protests in South Africa
In recent years South Africa has seen an increase in 'service delivery protests' – protests related to the inadequate provision of services – as a result of growing citizen frustration resulting from high levels of economic inequality. Unemployment, housing, water and sanitation, electricity, corruption and municipal administration, health and crime, have all been listed as reasons for the protests, often described a 'rebellion of the poor'. Give…
African Feminist Media Studies
The media constitute social realities, meaning and power, and, in many developing states, are sites of social and political struggle. Political and economic developments in African media over the l
Digital journalism and online public spheres in South Africa
This article explores and evaluates the growth of digital journalism in South Africa, within the context of increased use of online social media in the field. Increasingly, local activists are using mobile and online social networking to promote their events and causes, and reach their constituencies. Similarly, journalists are using digital media to practise their craft, reach new audiences, and sometimes even to change the notion of who practis…
Communication from above and below
Since the end of apartheid, there has been a steady rise in community protests in South Africa. Many of these protests – often cumulatively grouped under the rubric of 'service delivery protests' are not only about the delivery of basic services, but equally about the closing down of democratic/institutional space and process when communities try to raise issues related to services and corruption. If protests are a way for the poor and the margin…
Television and Black Twitter in South Africa
This article examines Twitter use by audiences of the popular South African television show, Our Perfect Wedding. We argue that the show’s Twitter feed provides an extension of South Africa’s ‘Black Twitter’ facilitating a space for recognition and group identity for Black South African television viewers. Such a space is significant since Black audiences have been neglected in the short history of South African television broadcasting. On Our Pe…
Young women and ‘technologies of the self’
Previously, cellphone ownership in South Africa was for a privileged few, but today it has become an essential part of the adolescent fashion accessory. Similarly, access to the internet is more widespread with the rise of the mobile internet, and online social networking applications are very popular in South Africa, particularly among young people across all social classes. This study explores young women's use of mobile and online social netwo…
Facebook and politics in Africa
The potential for the Internet to play a role in political life, and the extension of the public sphere, has been widely documented. More specifically, social media has emerged as an arena of political communication, widely used by political parties for campaigning, and also by citizens to choreograph various forms of protest. In the African context, the growth of the mobile Internet has resulted in the rise of social media platforms, most notabl…
Commercial music radio, race and identity in South Africa
In South Africa, listeners often believe that radio stations deliberately constitute their audiences in terms of race. This article further explores this notion using commercial music station Good Hope FM as a case study. Radio creates a textured soundscape that is experienced as part of the material culture of the home; it contributes to the creation of domestic environments and it can help maintain and establish identities. These assertions are…
Talk radio, democracy and citizenship in (South) Africa
Decolonizing Digital Methods
The rapid growth of the Internet and social media platforms has increasingly made these central focus areas for media scholars around the world. Within the context of the broader framework of the movement towards decolonizing media and communication studies, this growth of digital methods raises key questions including: How are digital methods in these contexts currently being used and how might scholars begin to think about “decolonizing” these …
Gender in South African newsrooms
Academic research reveals a quantitative and qualitative underrepresentation of women in news production and content. This article presents findings of a qualitative study, exploring the experiences of women journalists in Cape Town, South Africa. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews, the research found that most journalists did not feel that their gender impacted daily newsroom routines, with many seeing their predominant coverage of ‘soft…
Decolonisation is not a vibe
This paper argues that decolonisation in media and communication studies must be rooted in anti-capitalist praxis, not just symbolic critique. While the field increasingly gestures toward decoloniality through the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion, such moves often sidestep the material infrastructures, labour conditions, funding regimes and citation politics that structure how academic knowledge is produced. Drawing on critical scholarship fro…
The Limitations of Hashtag Feminist Activism on South African Twitter
Social media has become a central arena for debates around feminism and gender in South Africa. One recent example can be found in the hashtag #MenAreTrash, which has been a trending topic multiple times on South African Twitter. However, despite the prevalence of gender-based violence in the country, these conversations have also come under strong criticism, especially from men. Existing literature on social media expressions of misogyny and ant…
Questioning the media-democracy link
It is often assumed that a robust, free and independent media will contribute to the deepening of democracy by keeping governments accountable and broadening citizen participation in deliberative democratic debates. But in new democracies such as South Africa, the deepening and broadening of democratic participation is often curtailed by challenges such as unequal access to the media, the orientation of mainstream media towards elite audiences an…
In The Pink
South Africa is the only country in the world that makes constitutional provision for gays and lesbians. Nevertheless, despite much openness and the existence of progressive constitutional rights, gays in South Africa occupy a marginal space, often facing discrimination and marginalization. This article provides a descriptive account of the radio program In the Pink, which airs on the community radio station Bush Radio. In the Pink is presented a…
South African tabloid coverage of Covid19
Around the world, tabloid newspapers are routinely surrounded by a moral and cultural panic. They are criticised for lowering standards of journalism and privileging sensation above substance, diverting readers from serious news to entertainment, or foregoing ethical principles. However, scholarship about tabloids have also highlighted the ways in which these papers are frequently better attuned to their readers’ everyday lived experience. In Sou…
Larry Strelitz. 2005. Mixed reception
In Mixed Reception, Strelitz explores the theoretical debates about the relationship between global media texts and local audiences, using his case study of students at Rhodes University to highlight some of the main issues related to youth consumption of global media texts, particularly television
Children, Culture, and Identity on South African Community Radio
With the global rise of community radio, children and youth are increasingly participating in the production of radio programs. Youth radio is on the rise in the developing world, and international radio networks feature the voices of children, often focusing on disadvantaged groups such as children affected by war. Some examples include Radio Gune Yi in Senegal, a nationally aired program produced for and by children in villages and outlying are…
Contextualising journalism education and training in Southern Africa
In this article it is argued that journalism education in Southern Africa must \ncontend with defining a new academic identity for itself, extricating itself from \ndependency on Western oriented models of journalism education and training, \nas this has been a perennial challenge in most of Africa
In The Pink
South Africa is the only country in the world that makes constitutional provision for gays and lesbians. Nevertheless, despite much openness and the existence of progressive constitutional rights, gays in South Africa occupy a marginal space, often facing discrimination and marginalization. This article provides a descriptive account of the radio program In the Pink, which airs on the community radio station Bush Radio. In the Pink is presented a…
Using online social networking for teaching and learning
Web-based learning has made learning content much more freely and instantaneously available to students who can download course notes and readings with a single mouse click. Facebook is one of many Web 2.0 tools – wikis, delicious, YouTube, podcasts – that are listed as having potential applications for teaching and learning. Moreover, it has been argued that the current generation of youth, often described as Net Geners or Digital Natives, may b…
Handbook of Internet Crime
Y. Jewkes & M. Yar (eds), Handbook of Internet Crime (Abingdon, UK: Willan Publishing, 2009), 664 pp., ISBN 978-1-84392-523-1 (hbk), £89.00. The Internet has become a remarkable part of everyday li
Digital journalism and online public spheres in South Africa
This article explores and evaluates the growth of digital journalism in South Africa, within the context of increased use of online social media in the field. Increasingly, local activists are using mobile and online social networking to promote their events and causes, and reach their constituencies. Similarly, journalists are using digital media to practise their craft, reach new audiences, and sometimes even to change the notion of who practis…
African Feminist Media Studies
The media constitute social realities, meaning and power, and, in many developing states, are sites of social and political struggle. Political and economic developments in African media over the l
Young women and ‘technologies of the self’
Previously, cellphone ownership in South Africa was for a privileged few, but today it has become an essential part of the adolescent fashion accessory. Similarly, access to the internet is more widespread with the rise of the mobile internet, and online social networking applications are very popular in South Africa, particularly among young people across all social classes. This study explores young women's use of mobile and online social netwo…
Blogging and tweeting climate change in South Africa
It is widely agreed that the mainstream mass media play an important role in the climate change debate by providing coverage and thus placing the issue on the public agenda; by providing their audiences with the key aspects of the debate and information related to mitigation and adaption; and, to a lesser extent, by driving policy agendas. Much research on media coverage of climate change is located in the North; and ‘the media’ is often taken to…
Conducting Media Ethnographies in A frica
This chapter explores the methodology of ethnography in postcolonial Africa, with specific reference to anthropological media research. The chapter draws on an ethnography of a local radio station in South Africa as a starting point from which to make several observations about media ethnographies and anthropological approaches to media production and consumption. It outlines how the chosen methodology revealed unique characteristics of the local…
Youth, Facebook and politics in South Africa
Social networking sites, Facebook in particular, are growing in popularity in South Africa. With the increasing affordability of mobile handsets, users are able to access the mobile Internet and connect via mobile social networking applications. This article explores how Facebook is used by South African youth, with particular reference to their political participation and involvement. Research has shown the declining involvement of young people …
Social Media and Community Radio Journalism in South Africa
Using a qualitative approach, this article explores South African community radio stations’ uses of the internet, particularly the online social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter. Specifically, it explores the extent to which these sites are used in news production, and whether there is an increase in organization on the basis of network sociality instead of identity politics or communal social relations. Focusing on three community radio st…
Radio propaganda and the broadcasting of hatred
Additional informationNotes on contributorsTanja BoschDr Tanja Bosch is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, where she teaches radio studies, new media and qualitative research
Commercial music radio, race and identity in South Africa
In South Africa, listeners often believe that radio stations deliberately constitute their audiences in terms of race. This article further explores this notion using commercial music station Good Hope FM as a case study. Radio creates a textured soundscape that is experienced as part of the material culture of the home; it contributes to the creation of domestic environments and it can help maintain and establish identities. These assertions are…
Research in African journalism
Additional informationNotes on contributorsTanja Bosch Tanja Bosch is senior lecturer in the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is associate editor of African Journalism Studies
Uses and gratifications of computers in South African elderly people
Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted with residents at an old-aged home in Cape Town, South Africa, this study examines the main uses and gratifications elderly people get from computers. While the research focus in Africa has been on the health of elderly people, particularly with respect to HIV/AIDS, there is little research into their adoption of new technologies, as the research focus with respect to that topic has been primarily on youth…
Participatory politics and citizen journalism in a networked Africa
"Participatory politics and citizen journalism in a networked Africa." Information, Communication & Society, 19(12), pp. 1704–1705
Gender in South African newsrooms
Academic research reveals a quantitative and qualitative underrepresentation of women in news production and content. This article presents findings of a qualitative study, exploring the experiences of women journalists in Cape Town, South Africa. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews, the research found that most journalists did not feel that their gender impacted daily newsroom routines, with many seeing their predominant coverage of ‘soft…
Twitter activism and youth in South Africa
This article uses the South African student-led campaign known as Rhodes Must Fall, commonly referred to simply as #RMF, to explore youth activism and counter-memory via social networking site Twitter. The RMF campaign took place at the University of Cape Town and comprised student-led protests, which campaigned to remove the statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes, as activists argued that it promoted institutionalized racism and promote…
Questioning the media-democracy link
It is often assumed that a robust, free and independent media will contribute to the deepening of democracy by keeping governments accountable and broadening citizen participation in deliberative democratic debates. But in new democracies such as South Africa, the deepening and broadening of democratic participation is often curtailed by challenges such as unequal access to the media, the orientation of mainstream media towards elite audiences an…
Pictures, Protests and Politics
News media have often been criticised for framing social protests in negative ways, particular through photojournalism. While news photographs can shape the public's understanding of social and political events, research has shown that journalists often portray dramatic, violent or sensationalist images. This paper shifts the focus from mainstream news media, to explore how citizens themselves visually frame protests. The paper provides results f…
African Feminist Media Studies
The media constitute social realities, meaning and power, and, in many developing states, are sites of social and political struggle. Political and economic developments in African media over the last two decades have led to significant media transformation, with, I would argue, a concurrent dearth of feminist media scholarship (see also Audrey Gadzekpo 2009). Media monitoring initiatives, such as the Global Media Monitoring Project, which has no…
Print media coverage of service delivery protests in South Africa
In recent years South Africa has seen an increase in 'service delivery protests' – protests related to the inadequate provision of services – as a result of growing citizen frustration resulting from high levels of economic inequality. Unemployment, housing, water and sanitation, electricity, corruption and municipal administration, health and crime, have all been listed as reasons for the protests, often described a 'rebellion of the poor'. Give…
Communication from above and below
Since the end of apartheid, there has been a steady rise in community protests in South Africa. Many of these protests – often cumulatively grouped under the rubric of 'service delivery protests' are not only about the delivery of basic services, but equally about the closing down of democratic/institutional space and process when communities try to raise issues related to services and corruption. If protests are a way for the poor and the margin…
Sociology (37 works) · Political science (34 works) · Media studies (26 works) · Politics (23 works) · Media Studies and Communication (22 works) · Law (21 works) · Law (16 works) · Social Media and Politics (16 works) · Social media (13 works) · Social science (12 works)