Ruth Teer‐tomaselli
Biographic Data
| ID | 3605846 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth Teer‐tomaselli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth |
| FAMILY NAME | Teer‐tomaselli |
| SIGNATURE | TOMASELLI R T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of KwaZulu-Natal |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0275-1006 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Public Participation in the South African Broadcasting Corporation (Sabc) Radio Stations
Radio has always been, and still is, one of the most useful, available and affordable media. Radio has remained relevant and continues to build communities through its programming. This article investigates public participation in the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) radio stations using Sithakela Isizwe on Ukhozi FM and The View Point on SAfm as case studies. These two radio stations are relevant case studies with which to explore p…
Visual Community Autoethnography and Heritage: Selected Cairns in South Africa
Cultural heritage practitioners and activists in South Africa engage in community autoethnography both in process and in the product. We spent over seven years collaborating with post-conflict museums that include community autoethnographic products in their tours and/or exhibits. This collaborative research focused on oral storytelling as adopted by the museum guides. This storytelling includes community visual autoethnographic products that eng…
Mediated climate rift society: Articulation and metabolic rift theories in analyzing climate change news in South Africa
Introduction Journalism is essential in addressing climate change. Journalists' constructions of climate change issues, worldviews, and proposed solutions legitimise those aspects that are made commonsensical and are given discursive salience. The news media has often constructed climate change as a purely scientific issue whose solutions rely on technological interventions- thus neglecting climate change's cultural and political economics. This …
The Boy on the Beach: A Semiotic Reading of Photographs
Photojournalism has been an important aspect of reporting social trauma since at least the American Civil War (1861–65), bringing the horrors of conflict “into the living-rooms” of homes across the world. Based on the photographs of two Syrian refugee children, Aylan Kurdi (“the boy on the beach”) and Omran Daqneesh (“the Aleppo boy in the ambulance”) the present research suggests that photographs of children in conflict are particularly memorabl…
The Four-Leafed Clover: Political Economy as a Method of Analysis
Media Broadcasters as Agents of Participatory Communication through Audience Involvement: MultiChoice’s Strategies
Transnational media broadcasters, including MultiChoice, cater to global (or continental) audiences, but have primary obligations to local domains in their country of origin. This study explores MultiChoice’s approach to both its South African and pan-African audiences. We proffer concrete examples of the media as vehicles of inclusive and participatory communication, with a focus on audience involvement strategies, premised on the notion that br…
The Contradictions of Public Service and Commercialisation in Mid-century South African Broadcasting: A Case Study of the Schoch Commission and Springbok Radio
This study focuses on the 1950 introduction of the commercial radio station, Springbok Radio, into the South African Broadcasting Corporation, a Commonwealth inspired public service broadcaster (PSB) resulting from the Schoch Commission (1948). The paper argues that the introduction of Springbok Radio was prompted by the financial crisis faced by the Corporation; the broadcaster’s attempt to broaden its appeal beyond elite audiences serviced by P…
Print Media Standardisation and Professionalism: Determinants of independence of Ghanaian media
The independence of the media under Ghana’s Fourth Republic is assessed from the perspective of standards and professionalism. Using a qualitative method, the study shows that unethical practices are evident in the print media landscape in Ghana, and argues that this can be traced to four major spheres: educational qualification, existence of several professional associations, a weak regulatory body and “money matters”. Overall, the study argues …
Capacity building, tertiary postgraduate interventions and the changing media environment in southern and eastern Africa
An academic revolution in higher education during the past half century has been marked by transformations unprecedented in scope and diversity. Simultaneously, the significant changes in the ‘mediascape’ of southern and eastern Africa over the past two decades have replaced total state control with a degree of liberalization, while the digital revolution has changed the access to, and the content of, media programming. The article argues that th…
Broadcasting in southern and eastern Africa
Additional informationNotes on contributorsRuth Teer-TomaselliRUTH TEER-TOMASELLI is Professor and Director of the Centre for Communication, Media and Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Language, programming and propaganda during the Sabc's first decade
The present article argues that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), along with a number of other institutions, was a key site in the promotion of Afrikaans linguistic autonomy and a popular Afrikaner cultural self-identity ahead of the 1948 elections. It takes as its point of departure that – in keeping with the idea of the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991), of nationhood being a constructed reality built from the raw material o…
Ownership and Regulation of Television in Anglophone Africa
Empire and broadcasting in the interwar years: Towards a consideration of public broadcasting in the British dominions
The article identifies the ambivalent, contradictory identities of those English-speaking listeners in the far-flung outreaches of the Empire in the period between the two world wars who forged complex identities supporting aspects of the British Empire, while nurturing notions of independence with a rapidly changing political, economic and cultural dispensation that made up the 'British world' in the interwar years. The focus remains on the esta…
Media and Empire in the 20 th century
Media history is a relatively new area in media studies worldwide. In South Africa, it has not made significant inroads onto the agendas of conference programmes, academic journal articles or student syllabi. Twenty years ago, the eminent Danish scholar, Hans Fredrik Dahl (1994: 551), noted that 'the media as a historical object is far from fully understood at present'. In South African scholarship at least, not much has changed. Dahl went on to …
Stuart Hall
In service of Empire: The South African Broadcasting Corporation during World War II
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was a microcosm of the wider South African political situation, riven through with political, racial and linguistic divisions. A substantial English-speaking population compacted an alliance with a sizable sector of Afrikaans speakers under the leadership of Jan Smuts to form the United Party, dedicated to a unified, bilingual South Africa with strong ties to the wider British Commonwealth. The la…
Exogenous and Endogenous Democracy: South African Politics and Media
The 2007 annual congress of the ruling African National Congress, South Africa, was a watershed in post-apartheid political and media developments. This article reviews the implications of this meeting for democracy and the media in light of the history of media-state relations during and after the political transition, and in terms of the unique role of the media in acting as internal opposition to the successive ruling apartheid and post-aparth…
Internationalising Media Studies: The South/ern African Communication Association
A discussion of the history of journalism and mass communication studies, in relation to its alter ego, media studies, provides the backdrop to an analysis of the role played by the South African Communication Association (SACOMM) during the 1980s and after apartheid, up to 2006. The central argument is that SACOMM was criss-crossed by a particular kind of internal family argument in which specific contradictions were being negotiated: (1) pro-ap…
Intellectual property rights and the political economy of culture
The domain of intellectual property rights, along with the regulations that govern them, has a steadily, almost visibly incremental bearing these days upon the ordinary lives of people across the globe, in the rich world and the poor and in the North and the South. Its influence has escalated to the point where for some it may mean the difference between life and death; on it are now founded industries in the first rank of corporate power and thr…
Images of negotiation: The story of an election told through print advertisements
This study offers an account of the campaigning of the three main political parties involved in the 1994 national general election in South Africa through a close reading of their paid advertisements in the mainstream print media. Prior to the 1994 elections, the use of political advertising in the lead-up to elections was sporadic. The first democratic elections changed all the rules of engagement: while there were no television advertisements, …
Transforming state owned enterprises in the Global Age: Lessons from broadcasting and telecommunications in South Africa
The study documents and analyzes the restructuring and transformation of South African broadcasting and telecommunications sector, in the light of two parallel trends: •The globally-apparent challenges to the sector •The impact of the neo-liberal agenda on the part of the South African government towards the ‘structuring’ of state-owned enterprises. The ‘crises’ in public broadcasting and telecommunications sectors internationally are well docume…
The Public Broadcaster and Democracy in Transformation: The 1996 Spry Memorial Lecture
Public service broadcasting’s purpose, the object of much debate in South Africa, may be defined as the provision of a universal service of excellent programming while maintaining public legitimacy through an editorial independence from both the government of the day and commercial interests. Since the 1980s, the global media landscape has undergone fundamental changes. Most of the dynamics which today plague public broadcasting are of internatio…
Shifting spaces: Popular culture and national identity
Mediacoop Mozambique
Moving towards democracy: The South African Broadcasting Corporation and the 1994 election
Internationalising Media Studies: The South/ern African Communication Association
A discussion of the history of journalism and mass communication studies, in relation to its alter ego, media studies, provides the backdrop to an analysis of the role played by the South African Communication Association (SACOMM) during the 1980s and after apartheid, up to 2006. The central argument is that SACOMM was criss-crossed by a particular kind of internal family argument in which specific contradictions were being negotiated: (1) pro-ap…
Print Media Standardisation and Professionalism: Determinants of independence of Ghanaian media
The independence of the media under Ghana’s Fourth Republic is assessed from the perspective of standards and professionalism. Using a qualitative method, the study shows that unethical practices are evident in the print media landscape in Ghana, and argues that this can be traced to four major spheres: educational qualification, existence of several professional associations, a weak regulatory body and “money matters”. Overall, the study argues …
Exogenous and Endogenous Democracy: South African Politics and Media
The 2007 annual congress of the ruling African National Congress, South Africa, was a watershed in post-apartheid political and media developments. This article reviews the implications of this meeting for democracy and the media in light of the history of media-state relations during and after the political transition, and in terms of the unique role of the media in acting as internal opposition to the successive ruling apartheid and post-aparth…
Moving towards democracy: The South African Broadcasting Corporation and the 1994 election
The Boy on the Beach: A Semiotic Reading of Photographs
Photojournalism has been an important aspect of reporting social trauma since at least the American Civil War (1861–65), bringing the horrors of conflict “into the living-rooms” of homes across the world. Based on the photographs of two Syrian refugee children, Aylan Kurdi (“the boy on the beach”) and Omran Daqneesh (“the Aleppo boy in the ambulance”) the present research suggests that photographs of children in conflict are particularly memorabl…
Media and Empire in the 20 th century
Media history is a relatively new area in media studies worldwide. In South Africa, it has not made significant inroads onto the agendas of conference programmes, academic journal articles or student syllabi. Twenty years ago, the eminent Danish scholar, Hans Fredrik Dahl (1994: 551), noted that 'the media as a historical object is far from fully understood at present'. In South African scholarship at least, not much has changed. Dahl went on to …
In service of Empire: The South African Broadcasting Corporation during World War II
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was a microcosm of the wider South African political situation, riven through with political, racial and linguistic divisions. A substantial English-speaking population compacted an alliance with a sizable sector of Afrikaans speakers under the leadership of Jan Smuts to form the United Party, dedicated to a unified, bilingual South Africa with strong ties to the wider British Commonwealth. The la…
Intellectual property rights and the political economy of culture
The domain of intellectual property rights, along with the regulations that govern them, has a steadily, almost visibly incremental bearing these days upon the ordinary lives of people across the globe, in the rich world and the poor and in the North and the South. Its influence has escalated to the point where for some it may mean the difference between life and death; on it are now founded industries in the first rank of corporate power and thr…
Images of negotiation: The story of an election told through print advertisements
This study offers an account of the campaigning of the three main political parties involved in the 1994 national general election in South Africa through a close reading of their paid advertisements in the mainstream print media. Prior to the 1994 elections, the use of political advertising in the lead-up to elections was sporadic. The first democratic elections changed all the rules of engagement: while there were no television advertisements, …
Transforming state owned enterprises in the Global Age: Lessons from broadcasting and telecommunications in South Africa
The study documents and analyzes the restructuring and transformation of South African broadcasting and telecommunications sector, in the light of two parallel trends: •The globally-apparent challenges to the sector •The impact of the neo-liberal agenda on the part of the South African government towards the ‘structuring’ of state-owned enterprises. The ‘crises’ in public broadcasting and telecommunications sectors internationally are well docume…
The Public Broadcaster and Democracy in Transformation: The 1996 Spry Memorial Lecture
Public service broadcasting’s purpose, the object of much debate in South Africa, may be defined as the provision of a universal service of excellent programming while maintaining public legitimacy through an editorial independence from both the government of the day and commercial interests. Since the 1980s, the global media landscape has undergone fundamental changes. Most of the dynamics which today plague public broadcasting are of internatio…
Celebrating Difference or Naturalising Stereotypes
The Simpsons
Moving towards democracy: The South African Broadcasting Corporation and the 1994 election
Mediacoop Mozambique
Shifting spaces: Popular culture and national identity
The Public Broadcaster and Democracy in Transformation: The 1996 Spry Memorial Lecture
Public service broadcasting’s purpose, the object of much debate in South Africa, may be defined as the provision of a universal service of excellent programming while maintaining public legitimacy through an editorial independence from both the government of the day and commercial interests. Since the 1980s, the global media landscape has undergone fundamental changes. Most of the dynamics which today plague public broadcasting are of internatio…
Transforming state owned enterprises in the Global Age: Lessons from broadcasting and telecommunications in South Africa
The study documents and analyzes the restructuring and transformation of South African broadcasting and telecommunications sector, in the light of two parallel trends: •The globally-apparent challenges to the sector •The impact of the neo-liberal agenda on the part of the South African government towards the ‘structuring’ of state-owned enterprises. The ‘crises’ in public broadcasting and telecommunications sectors internationally are well docume…
Images of negotiation: The story of an election told through print advertisements
This study offers an account of the campaigning of the three main political parties involved in the 1994 national general election in South Africa through a close reading of their paid advertisements in the mainstream print media. Prior to the 1994 elections, the use of political advertising in the lead-up to elections was sporadic. The first democratic elections changed all the rules of engagement: while there were no television advertisements, …
Intellectual property rights and the political economy of culture
The domain of intellectual property rights, along with the regulations that govern them, has a steadily, almost visibly incremental bearing these days upon the ordinary lives of people across the globe, in the rich world and the poor and in the North and the South. Its influence has escalated to the point where for some it may mean the difference between life and death; on it are now founded industries in the first rank of corporate power and thr…
Internationalising Media Studies: The South/ern African Communication Association
A discussion of the history of journalism and mass communication studies, in relation to its alter ego, media studies, provides the backdrop to an analysis of the role played by the South African Communication Association (SACOMM) during the 1980s and after apartheid, up to 2006. The central argument is that SACOMM was criss-crossed by a particular kind of internal family argument in which specific contradictions were being negotiated: (1) pro-ap…
Exogenous and Endogenous Democracy: South African Politics and Media
The 2007 annual congress of the ruling African National Congress, South Africa, was a watershed in post-apartheid political and media developments. This article reviews the implications of this meeting for democracy and the media in light of the history of media-state relations during and after the political transition, and in terms of the unique role of the media in acting as internal opposition to the successive ruling apartheid and post-aparth…
Media and Empire in the 20 th century
Media history is a relatively new area in media studies worldwide. In South Africa, it has not made significant inroads onto the agendas of conference programmes, academic journal articles or student syllabi. Twenty years ago, the eminent Danish scholar, Hans Fredrik Dahl (1994: 551), noted that 'the media as a historical object is far from fully understood at present'. In South African scholarship at least, not much has changed. Dahl went on to …
Stuart Hall
In service of Empire: The South African Broadcasting Corporation during World War II
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was a microcosm of the wider South African political situation, riven through with political, racial and linguistic divisions. A substantial English-speaking population compacted an alliance with a sizable sector of Afrikaans speakers under the leadership of Jan Smuts to form the United Party, dedicated to a unified, bilingual South Africa with strong ties to the wider British Commonwealth. The la…
Broadcasting in southern and eastern Africa
Additional informationNotes on contributorsRuth Teer-TomaselliRUTH TEER-TOMASELLI is Professor and Director of the Centre for Communication, Media and Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Language, programming and propaganda during the Sabc's first decade
The present article argues that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), along with a number of other institutions, was a key site in the promotion of Afrikaans linguistic autonomy and a popular Afrikaner cultural self-identity ahead of the 1948 elections. It takes as its point of departure that – in keeping with the idea of the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991), of nationhood being a constructed reality built from the raw material o…
Ownership and Regulation of Television in Anglophone Africa
Empire and broadcasting in the interwar years: Towards a consideration of public broadcasting in the British dominions
The article identifies the ambivalent, contradictory identities of those English-speaking listeners in the far-flung outreaches of the Empire in the period between the two world wars who forged complex identities supporting aspects of the British Empire, while nurturing notions of independence with a rapidly changing political, economic and cultural dispensation that made up the 'British world' in the interwar years. The focus remains on the esta…
Capacity building, tertiary postgraduate interventions and the changing media environment in southern and eastern Africa
An academic revolution in higher education during the past half century has been marked by transformations unprecedented in scope and diversity. Simultaneously, the significant changes in the ‘mediascape’ of southern and eastern Africa over the past two decades have replaced total state control with a degree of liberalization, while the digital revolution has changed the access to, and the content of, media programming. The article argues that th…
The Contradictions of Public Service and Commercialisation in Mid-century South African Broadcasting: A Case Study of the Schoch Commission and Springbok Radio
This study focuses on the 1950 introduction of the commercial radio station, Springbok Radio, into the South African Broadcasting Corporation, a Commonwealth inspired public service broadcaster (PSB) resulting from the Schoch Commission (1948). The paper argues that the introduction of Springbok Radio was prompted by the financial crisis faced by the Corporation; the broadcaster’s attempt to broaden its appeal beyond elite audiences serviced by P…
Print Media Standardisation and Professionalism: Determinants of independence of Ghanaian media
The independence of the media under Ghana’s Fourth Republic is assessed from the perspective of standards and professionalism. Using a qualitative method, the study shows that unethical practices are evident in the print media landscape in Ghana, and argues that this can be traced to four major spheres: educational qualification, existence of several professional associations, a weak regulatory body and “money matters”. Overall, the study argues …
The Four-Leafed Clover: Political Economy as a Method of Analysis
Media Broadcasters as Agents of Participatory Communication through Audience Involvement: MultiChoice’s Strategies
Transnational media broadcasters, including MultiChoice, cater to global (or continental) audiences, but have primary obligations to local domains in their country of origin. This study explores MultiChoice’s approach to both its South African and pan-African audiences. We proffer concrete examples of the media as vehicles of inclusive and participatory communication, with a focus on audience involvement strategies, premised on the notion that br…
The Boy on the Beach: A Semiotic Reading of Photographs
Photojournalism has been an important aspect of reporting social trauma since at least the American Civil War (1861–65), bringing the horrors of conflict “into the living-rooms” of homes across the world. Based on the photographs of two Syrian refugee children, Aylan Kurdi (“the boy on the beach”) and Omran Daqneesh (“the Aleppo boy in the ambulance”) the present research suggests that photographs of children in conflict are particularly memorabl…
Mediated climate rift society: Articulation and metabolic rift theories in analyzing climate change news in South Africa
Introduction Journalism is essential in addressing climate change. Journalists' constructions of climate change issues, worldviews, and proposed solutions legitimise those aspects that are made commonsensical and are given discursive salience. The news media has often constructed climate change as a purely scientific issue whose solutions rely on technological interventions- thus neglecting climate change's cultural and political economics. This …
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Media studies (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · African history and culture studies (10 works) · Media Studies and Communication (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Corporation (7 works)