News media gatekeeping on digital platforms : a strategy for enhancing brand personality and news diffusion

Abstracts in English and XhosaThis cross-sectional qualitative mixed-methods study explores how news media organisations employ their gatekeeping activities to brand their news outlets and, subsequently, how the brand helps to diffuse their news stories. The focus is primarily on how radio in Ghana has capitalised on technological advancement to create an online presence through radio online digital brand extensions, thus increasing their news outlet's availability to media audiences for enhanced news dissemination. This coincides with the burgeoning emergence of digital content creators facilitated by technological advancement in the media space, resulting in traditional media losing its position as the sole news source and agenda setter. This notwithstanding, the gatekeeping performed by traditional media outlets and their credibility built over the years was found to sustain them in the digital era. Situated within the interpretive research paradigm, this exploratory mixed-method study is approached qualitatively, with the quantitative aspect serving an auxiliary role. It is informed by the gatekeeping and signalling theories. It purposively samples six online digital news media brands made up of three radio online brand extensions, namely myjoyonline.com, peacefmonline.com and citifmonline.com, and three solely online digital news brands, namely newsghana24.com, mynewsghana.net and modernghana.com. The research design used the NodeXL software to collect quantitative data from the Twitter handles of the six online digital brands to plot 24 network visualisation graphs over one month. This is followed by semi-structured interviews with the online news editors, social media managers and social media curators of the six news organisations. The study establishes that traditional media brand extensions are greatly advantaged in the digital era compared to their solely online digital brand counterparts. The brand identities built by traditional media through their normative gatekeeping decisions has translated into large audience followings on their digital media platforms. They are observed to follow a journalistic branding orientation. Solely online digital brands on the other hand follow a marketing brand orientation and they capitalise on their digital presence to improve their finances and sustainability. The study makes a two-fold recommendation to radio online digital brands on one hand and to solely online digital media brands on the other.Ngokusebenzisa iindlela zophando ezixutyiweyo, esi sifundo siphonononga indlela amaqumrhu eendaba asebenzisa ngayo ukuhlela njengecebo lokuzakhela igama, kwaye xa selidumile elo gama liqhuba njani ekusasazeni iindaba. Kugxininiswa kwindlela amajelo osasazo ngonomathotholo eGhana abusebenzisa ngayo ubuchwepheshe ekuveleni kumaza omoya ngokwenza iminatha yonomathotholo omanyelwa kwi-intanethi, ngaloo ndlela kube kusandiswa amathuba okufumana iindaba kubaphulaphuli ngokomeleza iinkqubo zosasazo lweendaba. Oku kungqamana nokuhluma okunwenwayo kwabaqulunqi bemixholo ngobuchwepheshe bedijithali, nto leyo idala ukuba amajelo osasazo abefudula ekhona alahlekelwe yindawo yawo yesiqhelo apho ebekade ewodwa ekusasazeni iindaba nasekusekeni iajenda. Noxa kunjalo, indlela yokuhlela iindaba, esetyenziswa ngamajelo akudala nokuthembeka kwawo eluntwini okudaleke emva kweminyaka emininzi, kwenza ukuba la majelo angagqumeleleki kweli xesha lobuchwepheshe bedijithali. Esi sifundo sisebenzise amava abathathi nxaxheba nezinye iindlela ezininzi zophando kwaye sivelelwe ngenkalo yokuzathuza, lo gama inkalo yokusebenzisa amanani inendima eyidlalileyo nayo ekuncediseni uphando. Kuqwalaselwe iingcingane zokuhlela nokusasaza. Kuthathwe isampulu ngononophelo kumajelo eendaba edijithali amathandathu akhiwe ngeminatha emithathu yonomathotholo ofumaneka kwi-intanethi. La majelo ngala: myjoyonline.com, peacefmonline.com, citifmonline.com, namathathu angawomoya qha angala: newsghana24.com, mynewsghana.net, modernghana.com. Uyilo lophando lwasebenzisa isixhobo sobuchwepheshe esiyiNodeXL ekuqokeleleni iinkcukacha zolwazi ngokuqwalasela amanani, kumaqonga onxibelelwano lweTwitter kumajelo amathandathu, kwaqulunqwa iigrafu zababukeli ezingama-24 kwixesha elingangenyanga. Kwalandeliswa ngeendliwano ndlebe ezingaqingqwanga ngokupheleleyo nabahleli beendaba, abaphathi bamaqonga onxibelelwano, abagcini bamaqonga onxibelelwano amaqumrhu eendaba amathandathu amatsha. Isifundo safumanisa ukuba iminatha yosasazo yakudala inamandla kwixesha ledijithali xa ithelekiswa nale iyidijithali qwaba. Amajelo osasazo akudala selezenzele igama kwaye ukwaziwa kwamagama awo neendlela ahlela ngazo iindaba kukhokelela ekufumaneni abaphulaphuli abaninzi kumaqonga awo edijithali. Abonakala elandela icebo lokusebenzisa ukwaziwa kwegama. Amajelo edijithali qwaba wona alandela icebo lokuququzelela ukwazisa igama kwaye axhathise ngokuba nawo ekhona kumaza edijithali ukuze akhulise imali yawo nozinzo. Esi sifundo senze iingcebiso ezimacala mabini, okokuqala kumajelo oonomathotholo bedijithali, okwesibini kumajelo edijithali qwaba.Communication ScienceD. Phil. (Communication Science

Art, Life Story and Cultural Memory: Profiles of the Artists of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial

A case study of four public artists uncovered how the artists’ lived experiences and awareness of cultural memory influenced their creation of commemorative artwork for the Lewis and Clark bicentennial. The study involves how the professional and cultural experiences of two White artists and two Native American artists living or working in the Missouri River Valley in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana influenced their art. Professional factors influencing the artists included education, involvement with the Lewis and Clark bicentennial, work space, and connections to arts communities. Cultural factors influencing artists were family relationships and ethnic, political, gender, and religious identification. Artists played two roles, as journeyers and as leaders. Artists first understood the creative process as an expedition, where the path to the finished artwork is not always clear with the potential to alter their beliefs and practices. Artists also understood their role as leaders in transforming the viewer’s understanding of commemorative events. The findings are useful in valuing the complexity of the artist’s life, the leadership role artists play in interpreting controversial events, and the challenges of maintaining an authentic creative voice in today’s society

Material geographies of the maker movement : community workshops and the making of sustainability in Edinburgh, Scotland

Recent years have seen the emergence of a novel type of community space around the world, labelled variously as makerspaces, hackerspaces, hacklabs, Fab Labs, and repair cafés. These workshops, often known collectively as the ‘maker movement’, have inspired considerable speculation regarding their potential to prefigure a more sustainable economy, including a shift to localised and participatory forms of production and consumption (Smith and Light, 2017). Until recently, the social scientific work on such spaces has been sparse, especially in-depth ethnographic work, though scholars are increasingly turning their attention to them, particularly in the fields of design and science and technology studies. This thesis, a practice-led ‘enactive ethnography’ drawing from three case study workshops in Edinburgh, Scotland, explores the question of sustainable development and maker spaces along two main axes: firstly, the emergence of sustainable practice in such spaces, and secondly, the relevance of such spaces to the cultivation of human wellbeing. The thesis is the first examination of such spaces drawing from developments in social theory towards relational materialism, more-than-representational approaches, and a focus on social practice. It draws a number of conclusions. Firstly, that claims of an undifferentiated global ‘maker movement’ may be exaggerated: the grassroots participant-led creation of such spaces results in irreducible diversity and local differentiation. Secondly, while claims about the potential of such spaces for reconfiguring global production and consumption are overstated, when viewed from a practice-oriented perspective, the communities of practice populating such sites comprise potent and potentially-valuable crucibles of knowledge and materials. And thirdly, trying to move away from individualistic conceptions of wellbeing, the case studies provided evidence for the shared workshops playing a crucial role in the contingent emergence of participant wellbeing. These findings are further developed in tandem with a posthuman reading of maker practices, contributing to timely scholarly debates on ‘making’ and ‘craft’

Collaborative learning in an English-to-Arabic translation course

Collaborative translation is a group activity in which participants work together to accomplish a single translation task or project (Kiraly 2000). While collaborative translation has grown in importance in community and professional settings over recent years (O’Hagan 2011; Cordingley and Manning 2017) and is currently being employed in many academic settings (Kiraly 2003; Kiraly et al. 2016a; Buysschaert et al. 2017; Kiraly and Massey 2019), its use in Arabic-speaking translator-training environments has thus far been limited, and little emphasis has been put on the issue of social interaction in collaborative translation. Against this background, this thesis reports on the design and implementation of a collaborative translation project at the Department of Translation, Yarmouk University, Jordan. The project involves a simulation of a real translation workplace in the translation course known as TRA 230 (translation from English into Arabic) in the academic year 2017/2018. Drawing on the tenets of social constructivism and using participatory action research and mixed methods in data collection, the research seeks principally to investigate how the instigation of a specifically collaborative teaching and learning environment affects the development of students’ teamworking and translation skills. Data on interactions was collected using classroom observation and questionnaires were used to elicit students’ attitudes towards the collaborative teaching and learning approach. Analysis of the qualitative data collected through observation show that the participants learned or honed many important transferable skills that they will need in their future careers as translators. Quantitative findings, based on the questionnaire research, were consistent with the qualitative results: participants showed high levels of agreement with positive statements related to the impact of teamwork on the development of both translation and interpersonal skills. The research thus concludes that collaborative translation is a feasible and successful teaching and learning approach in the English-to-Arabic translation classroom

Isis and Asiis : Eastern Africa's Kalenjiin people and their pharaonic origin legend : a comparative study

Biblical and Ancient StudiesD. Litt. et Phil. (Semitic Languages