Xenophobia and the Media

The role of the media is key in influencing social, historical and political perceptions. It is for these reasons that the Media Monitoring Project (MMP) carefully examines and critiques the South African media’s representation of the events of the world.
During the eleven years of democracy, the South African media has undergone substantial change and transformation, especially in the areas of ownership and the number of broadcasters. South Africa now boasts a free-to-air, commercial broadcaster (E-TV) and over 100 community radio stations, where there were none in existence before 1994.

However, despite innumerable changes, juniorisation of newsrooms and a lack of skilled staff and adequate resources have resulted in an increase in the number of incidents of poor reporting in South African media. Coverage of key social issues such as the representation of race, racial stereotyping, xenophobia and racism, is often of limited value, as it often fails to explore pertinent aspects in any depth. Media tend to lead with dramatic headlines that may sell more publications, but often trivialise the issues at stake and promote stereotypes and discrimination, which reinforces the alienation of specific groups of people.

The media holds enormous power to shape opinions and influence how people perceive race and racism, xenophobia and ethnicity. The media also play a key role in communicating, informing and educating the public at large. In this regard, and especially in the context of a democratic, human rights-orientated framework, the media has a responsibility to ensure that the information it communicates about race and racial identities is transparent, accurate, and ethical.

There can be no question as to the substantial progress made in South Africa in the last eleven years, but key social challenges pose serious threats to democracy. Poverty, gender-based violence and gender inequality, child abuse, crime, HIV and underdevelopment are just a few of the challenges that South Africa faces. The media has the daunting task of reporting on all of these complex issues, their respective contexts, developments, challenges and setbacks, while simultaneously ensuring that this reporting is done so in a clearly understandable, balanced, fair and accurate manner.

To make the media’s task even more difficult, most of the key social challenges that South Africa faces are interconnected. The result is, for example, that a story on poverty needs to be contextualised alongside issues of race and gender. When all of these different and highly complicated issues have to be taken into account, it is clear that there is considerable potential for limited representations and stereotypes within the media.

The legacy of classifying people by race, which was initiated by the apartheid regime, continues in the new democratic dispensation. People were divided according to their skin colour and the texture of their hair
into four different racial groups. These groups became popular in representing the South African society, classifying all people into Black, White, Indian, and Coloured communities. During the liberation struggle, the non-White groups fought together for equality and thus were branded Black. The division of people into ethnic groups and the homeland system brought issues of segregation along ethnic lines. Although different mechanisms have been put in place by both the current democratic government and civil society to find common grounds in this divided society, policies such as affirmative action and black economic empowerment aimed at redressing past injustices continue to divide the country along racial lines and disadvantaged groups such as women and people living with disabilities.

These policies have drawn on the racial classification as used by the apartheid government to classify people. The MMP has therefore decided to monitor how the media reports and represents issues of race, racism, xenophobia and ethnicity after the country has celebrated a decade of democracy; and how the media deals with the complexities of race and racial identities.

This paper is divided into three sections. Firstly, the MMP look into policies and ethical principles developed to guide journalists and editors on reporting on these issues in a manner that respects and promote people’s right to dignity and equality. This discussion will be followed by a section on previous monitoring undertaken by MMP on different topical issues but also had race, xenophobia, or ethnicity as a component. The third aspect of the paper looks into the representation of race, racism, xenophobia, and ethnicity in the media. This study will be compared to previous studies undertaken by the MMP on various issues that had race and racism as a component. The comparison will highlight whether there has been any significant changes in the manner in which the media represent issues of race and racial identities.

The need to include issues of xenophobia and Africa in this form of monitoring research is due to the fact that xenophobic behaviour is always targeted at Black people coming from other African countries. This brings to the fore issues of race and media representation of Africa to South Africans.

see below for the full story

http://internetstudies.ukzn.ac.za/inst102news/search/node/group%204

Final Movie

Racism and it's Origins

Racism and all it entails has its roots firmly planted in the socio-economic forces surrounding the coming to being of society and civilization as we know it. Debates over the origins of racism often suffer from a lack of clarity over the term. Many conflate recent forms of racism with earlier forms of ethnic and national conflict. In most cases ethno-national conflict seems to owe to conflict over land and strategic resources. In some cases ethnicity and nationalism were harnessed to wars between great religious empires (for example, the Muslim Turks and the Catholic Austro-Hungarians). As Benedict Anderson has suggested in Imagined Communities, ethnic identity and ethno-nationalism became a source of conflict within such empires with the rise of print-capitalism.

In its modern form, racism evolved in tandem with European exploration and conquest of much of the rest of the world, and especially after Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. As new peoples were encountered, fought, and ultimately subdued, theories about “race” began to develop, and these helped many to justify the differences in position and treatment of people whom they categorized as belonging to different races
Another possible source of racism is the misunderstanding of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution. Some took Darwin’s theories to imply that since some “races” were more civilized, there must be a biological basis for the difference. At the same time they appealed to biological theories of moral and intellectual traits to justify racial oppression. There is a great deal of controversy about race and intelligence, in part because the concepts of both race and IQ are themselves controversial.

Racism has always been both an instrument of discrimination and a tool of exploitation. But it manifests itself as a cultural phenomenon, susceptible to cultural solutions, such as multicultural education and the promotion of ethnic identities.
Tackling the problem of cultural inequality, however, does not by itself redress the problem of economic inequality. Racism is conditioned by economic imperatives, but negotiated through culture: religion, literature, art, science and the media.

Once, they demonised the blacks to justify slavery. Then they demonised the “coloureds” to justify colonialism. Today, they demonise asylum seekers to justify the ways of globalism. And, in the age of the media, of spin, demonisation sets out the parameters of popular culture within which such exclusion finds its own rationale — usually under the guise of xenophobia, the fear of strangers.

Interview with a "Shrink"

Picture: http://www.pacificariptide.com/pacifica_riptide/images/2007/07/06/good_shrink_bad_shrink.jpg

In a recent interview that I conducted with one of the resident psychologists' (whose name wishes to remain anonomys) on the UKZN, Howard College campus, some serious comments about the social enviroment of University life for gay people were made.

He comments on a scenario that involves hate crimes on two gay men on this campus in particular. Two gay men holding hands during a walk home were confronted by men in a car. After a passenger asked why they were holding hands and a few words were exchanged, the driver maneuvered the vehicle onto the sidewalk, pinning one of the men against the wall while the passenger shot him in the chest. When therapy is requested, it is usually short-term. But some victims do need long-term therapy. The Psychologist, says the principal risk is that the survivor may feel 'there's something wrong with me that caused me to be targeted as a gay person,'' he said. The psychologist's main task is to help the survivor reaffirm the positive value of a gay or lesbian identity, and help them feel the anger rather than blame themselves. That's why, he says, the psychologist needs to separate out the external event from the person's internal feelings.

So when a group of young men is hanging around looking for a target, he says, gay people are more likely victims because gays are 'not valued greatly and are somewhat acceptable to attack' because of society's antipathy towards them.

"Dignity" as a Global Concept

Set aside all forms of documentation, social norms, traditions, laws, and all hereditary morals and values…What is dignity? And what does it actually mean?

There are many forms of authority that have shaped the ideal of dignity and what the word itself actually means to us, as functioning faculties of the modern society. The English language in general, more specifically words, have changed dramatically over the past few centuries, what something may have meant and how it was defined, is very different in today’s society than it was then. This perception of denotation has been shaped by the social enviroment in which we live, the cultures and practices have somewhat largely changed. What may have been considered “dignified” 500 years ago would not necessarily be socially accepted today. This again is largely attributed to the way in which the societal machine has been advanced and engineered into something very different over the years.

Apart from time and space, geographical location must be taken into account. Religion and culture in certain parts of the world have altered at very different rates. The preservation of social practices and traditions in some countries have faded, others have not.

The bright lights of Dubai international airport beamed across the twilight sky, the airplanes parked side by side lined up for miles on end. Elaborate gold decorations and western influences, in every direction, this seemed the cosmopolitan metropolis indifferent to any other. The massive conveyor belts spews out masses of luggage to their eagerly awaiting counterparts, I collect my aged, bruised and tattered suit case in amongst the executive designer ones and head off towards the exits marked with bright twisted neon. Jet lagged and uncomfortable from the deprived sleep and shoddy seats on the plane, I make my way to the nearest cellular phone store, and ask for a sim card, the rudely abrupt man directs me to the automated vending machine. As soon as I was “in contact” I called one of my relatives and informed them of my arrival.

Not long after the phone call, somewhat lost in translation, I found myself waiting on the streets of Dubai in scorching heat on a late summer’s day. I watch as the local people hurry along to their desired destinations. At first it seemed as if it were no different to any other metropolis, but soon a familiar pattern began to occur. The women were all acutely conscious of their dress, their demeanor somewhat timid and subdued. In contrast to this was their conflicting male counterparts, their confident strides and arrogant chauvinistic characters’ exuded as they walked by. It was now becoming very clear to me that equality and inherent human dignity meant something very different in this part of the world.

Ambiguity

This picture was taken a few days ago, I've entitled it Ambiguity. With just a little Photoshop magic, the photograph was given an entirely different perspective.

The Definition of Tranquility

Amsterdam

The old, tired legs of the city, some abandoned and left alone, others waiting to be collected and taken home. The cold hard streets contrasted with the subtle classic look of the bicycles give the picture a very contemporary look.

Photography and the Media

A picture can tell a thousand words, a cliche it may be, but never more true. Still images, to me, create a story that no words could ever begin to tell. Photography is something that envelops our every day lives on a conscious and sub-conscious level. The media uses clever photography as a medium to convey messages to a particular audience.

The reality of the present day is that, the media in the form of literature, is no longer the most powerful form of expression. Television, billboards, magazines, flyer's, posters, shop windows, all forms of advertising and means of communication to the public are now done through visually stimulating pictures, photographs or short phrases. The world has become literally incompetent, society has regressed to a point where convenience and easy access is preffered over a will to learn and the hunger for the attainment of knowledge. everything has been made into easily accessible, bite size chunks, from the mass produced, commercially unhealthy food that we eat, to the unethical and immoral ideals of the modern society, what our concept of beauty is, the difference between right and wrong, political propaganda has all influenced us, and shaped the way we think. The media is the most omnipotent tool that anyone can have, with the media lies the collective brain of the world society.

With that being said, it is becomming more and more evident that visual literacy is becomming the order of the day, and the demand for this type of advertising is increasing rapidly. people are becomming less and less sesceptable to reading the newspaper, or willing to learn about the Marxist theory or read up on the great wall of China. Why do that? all we have to do is flick a button the remote control and watch a documentary, or go to the cinema and see a film on Carl Marx, why not just switch to the eight o'clock news and "watch" the newspaper unfold in front of your very eyes? It's all just too easy. Convenience is becomming the biggest downfall of society.

What good is technology for the majority, when only the minority have the power to fully understand it?

Appreciation for Art

Ive always had an appreciation for art, from Graffiti to Van Gogh and even as far as Miro, Art has a very distinctive quality that no other form of expression posesses. It has a life of its own, thriving on the imaginations of it's observer's, feeding off their energy and creating still images frozen in time, never to be altered, encapsulated with the uniqueness of it's creator.