TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING THROUGH ORAL NARRATIVE IN A PARTICIPATORY COMMUNICATION CONTEXT: AN INQUIRY INTO RADIO DRAMA-BASED TRAINING AMONG ZAMBIAN CAREGIVERS OF ABUSED AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN

This research investigates instructional narrative interventions for transformative learning among high orality reliant peoples. Two research questions asked: “Does an oral strategy of radio drama in a participatory environment lead to significant changes in knowledge and beliefs,” with a hypothesis stating there would be significant positive changes; and “When listeners experience narrative transport can it affect receptivity leading to knowledge and belief change,” and the hypothesis stated that narrative transport would correlate to higher positive responses. The mixed methods design analyzed personal experiences and survey responses of treatment group and control groups. Quantitatively I assessed a treatment group using a matched pre/posttest survey related to learning goals and the Transportation Imagery Survey. The qualitative data was gathered in focus groups and personal interviews. The findings showed a significant change in treatment group in knowledge and beliefs (40%). The treatment group also scored 74% correct answers in contrast to the posttest only survey control group of 56%. The additional modified Transportation Imagery Survey (TMS) assessed the treatment group’s level of transport into the narrative (6.1/7) and a positive correlation (.65) to the change in answers for the posttest. The study presents relevant considerations for instructional communication designers and professionals serving higher orality reliant audiences and the power of participatory narrative instruction constructing healthier knowledge and beliefs

Orality and technology, or the bit and the byte : The work of the World Oral Literature Project

For societies in which traditions are conveyed more through speech than through writing, oral literature is often an important medium for the transmission of ideas, knowledge, and history. The term "oral literature," while contested, can be broadly read to include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, folk tales, creation stories, songs, myths, spells, legends, proverbs, riddles, tongue twisters, recitations, and historical narratives. This list is by no means exhaustive or intended to be definitive, but it serves rather to underscore the range of performative styles that can be accommodated within the category of oral literature (and, by association, within folklore and oral tradition). In many cases, oral and performative traditions are not translated when a community shifts to using a more dominant language, and oral literature in general remains one of the most poorly studied and least recognized forms of human creative expression.Not

Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

Efforts to design voice-based, social media platforms for low-literacy communities in developing countries have not widened access to information in the ways intended. This article links this to who describes the relations that constitute personhood and how these relations are expressed in designing and deploying systems. I make these links oriented by critique in human–computer interaction that design continues a history of colonialism and embeds meanings in media that disrupt existing communication practices. I explore how we translated ‘logics’ about sociality through logics located outside of the rural South African community that we targeted for design and deployment. The system aimed to enable inhabitants to record, store and share voice files using a portable, communally owned display. I describe how we engaged with inhabitants, to understand needs, and represented and abstracted from encounters to articulate requirements, which we translated into statements about technology. Use of the system was not as predicted. My analysis suggests that certain writing cultures, embedded in translations, reify knowledge, disembody voices and neglect the rhythms of life. This biases social media towards individualist logics and limits affordances for forms, genres and other elements of communication that contribute to sociality. Thus, I propose oral practices offer oppositional power in designing digital bubbles to support human togetherness and that we can enrich design by moving the centre—a phrase taken from Ngu˜gı˜ wa Thiong’o (Moving the centre: the struggle for cultural freedoms, James Currey, London, 1993) who insists that liberation from colonialism requires plural sites of creativity. To realize this potential, we need radically different approaches that enable symmetrical translation.CSIR-Meraka, South Africa and partially by EPSRC Grant (EP/H042857/1).http://link.springer.com/journal/1462017-02-27hb201

Oral Literature in the Digital Age

Thanks to ever-greater digital connectivity, interest in oral traditions has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a widening pool of global users. When new publics consume, manipulate and connect with field recordings and digital cultural archives, their involvement raises important practical and ethical questions. This volume explores the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials; and ways of ensuring that when digital documents are created, they are not fossilized as a consequence of being archived. Fieldwork reports by linguists and anthropologists in three continents provide concrete examples of overcoming barriers—ethical, practical and conceptual—in digital documentation projects. Oral Literature in the Digital Age is an essential guide and handbook for ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians, and all who connect with indigenous communities in order to document and preserve oral traditions

Evaluating recorded audio media for health communication in South Africa

This dissertation reports on an exploratory study investigating the potential of recorded audio media (i.e. audiocassettes/CDs) as a method of health communication in South Africa. The investigation examines recorded audio media as an alternative to printed brochures. People need access to information in order to make informed decisions about their health. In South Africa, the high HIV/AIDS infection rate is a case in point. The literature review deals with the accessibility of information in terms of physical accessibility (whether the receiver can find, operate and use the communication medium); and semantic accessibility (whether the receiver understands the message disseminated via the medium). Through the review, it was discovered that, where necessary, information must then be repackaged from an inaccessible to an accessible and appropriate format. Factors like visual disabilities, low levels of literacy and low reading proficiency, can render printed information inaccessible. This study discusses and researches the feasibility of recorded audio media (audiocassettes/CDs) as an alternative to print-based brochures by means of a comparative literature review and empirical study. Selected HIV/AIDS brochures (developed by the Department of Health) and similar recorded audio messages were evaluated amongst the target audience in order to compare the comprehension of the messages, the accessibility and acceptability of both media forms. The study was conducted at four public health clinics, where individual structured interviews and focus group interviews were employed as data collection methods. The data was analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate the definite potential of the use of recorded audio media in health and HIV/AIDS communication, and should be explored further. The comprehension of the audio messages was better than that of the printed brochures indicating the semantic accessibility of the audio messages. The positive reaction of the research participants toward the recorded audio messages also indicates the acceptability of the medium. Incorporating audiocassettes into the media mix of HIV/AIDS and other development and/or health communication campaigns, will contribute to the overall effectiveness of the communication strategy.Dissertation (MA (Development Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2007.Information ScienceMAunrestricte

Evaluating recorded audio media for health communication in South Africa

This dissertation reports on an exploratory study investigating the potential of recorded audio media (i.e. audiocassettes/CDs) as a method of health communication in South Africa. The investigation examines recorded audio media as an alternative to printed brochures. People need access to information in order to make informed decisions about their health. In South Africa, the high HIV/AIDS infection rate is a case in point. The literature review deals with the accessibility of information in terms of physical accessibility (whether the receiver can find, operate and use the communication medium); and semantic accessibility (whether the receiver understands the message disseminated via the medium). Through the review, it was discovered that, where necessary, information must then be repackaged from an inaccessible to an accessible and appropriate format. Factors like visual disabilities, low levels of literacy and low reading proficiency, can render printed information inaccessible. This study discusses and researches the feasibility of recorded audio media (audiocassettes/CDs) as an alternative to print-based brochures by means of a comparative literature review and empirical study. Selected HIV/AIDS brochures (developed by the Department of Health) and similar recorded audio messages were evaluated amongst the target audience in order to compare the comprehension of the messages, the accessibility and acceptability of both media forms. The study was conducted at four public health clinics, where individual structured interviews and focus group interviews were employed as data collection methods. The data was analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate the definite potential of the use of recorded audio media in health and HIV/AIDS communication, and should be explored further. The comprehension of the audio messages was better than that of the printed brochures indicating the semantic accessibility of the audio messages. The positive reaction of the research participants toward the recorded audio messages also indicates the acceptability of the medium. Incorporating audiocassettes into the media mix of HIV/AIDS and other development and/or health communication campaigns, will contribute to the overall effectiveness of the communication strategy.Dissertation (MA (Development Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2008.Information Scienceunrestricte

The harmonious coexistence of sound and image for efficient audiovisual communication: the case of Kairos Communications LTD

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Ciências da Comunicação (área de especialização em Audiovisual e Multimédia)The present report is the result of a three-month traineeship at the Kairos Communications LTD in Maynooth, Ireland, which has long experience in cultural and religious sound and video productions, being an opportunity to practice audio-visual and multimedia knowledge acquired at the University of Minho. Although the traineeship was focused on production and post-production of contents, the Kairos Outside Broadcasting Unit was a big asset to improve technical skills. Based on the empirical experience acquired in the internship, this report is focused on the harmonious coexistence of sound and image for an efficient audio-visual communication. Sound and image corelates with each other as complementary elements in many digital media contents of today’s different digital platforms and applications. The increasing access to smartphones with great capabilities to record, edit ad share sound and image has turn most of the users into content producers, so that today, any cultural, politic, or social event has most probably someone catching sound or image. From the knowledge acquired with the research, an overview on the development of communication in the Democratic Republic of Congo is presented. Oral tradition has been the instrument to pass on knowledge to younger generations or convey information to the public. The development of communication in the Democratic Republic of Congo is linked to the former colonial power (Belgium) and France. France provided formation as well as equipment to update former radio journalists to the television that had been invading most of the world as an instrument of national pride. In fact, the development of media, mostly the radiobroadcast in the beginning, and then the television, was a great instrument of political propaganda for the newly independent African countries. Every country setup a radiobroadcast to free oneself from any other dependency. It was conceived as a great instrument to disseminate ideologies to the population. The forms of communication (verbal, non-verbal, written, etc.), the power and revolution of words and images in the world and in Africa, and the evolution in Congo, from oral to digital communication, are the focus of this report, which tries to understand what had led the Democratic Republic of Congo to the new media environment and where word and image intermingleO presente relatório é o resultado de um estágio de três meses na Kairos Communications LTD em Maynooth, Irlanda, que possui uma longa experiência em produções culturais e religiosas de som e vídeo, sendo uma oportunidade para praticar conhecimentos audiovisuais e multimédia adquiridos na Universidade do Minho. Embora o estágio tenha sido focado na produção e pós produção de conteúdos, a Kairos Outside Broadcasting Unit foi um grande ativo para o aperfeiçoamento das habilidades técnicas. Com base na experiência empírica adquirida no estágio, este relatório centra-se na coexistência harmoniosa de som e imagem para uma comunicação audiovisual eficiente. Som e imagem correlacionam-se entre si como elementos complementares em muitos conteúdos de média digital das diferentes plataformas e aplicativos digitais de hoje. O crescente acesso a smartphones com grandes recursos para gravar, editar e partilhar som e imagem transformou a maioria dos utilizadores em produtores de conteúdo, sendo que hoje, qualquer evento cultural, político ou social tem muito provavelmente alguém a captar o som ou a imagem. A partir dos conhecimentos adquiridos com a pesquisa realizada, é apresentado um panorama sobre o desenvolvimento da comunicação na República Democrática do Congo. A tradição oral tem sido o instrumento para passar conhecimento às gerações mais novas ou levar informações ao público. O desenvolvimento da comunicação na República Democrática do Congo está ligado à ex-potência colonial (Bélgica) e à França. A França forneceu formação e também equipamento para atualizar os ex-jornalistas de rádio sobre a televisão que vinha invadindo a maior parte do mundo como um instrumento de orgulho nacional. Na verdade, o desenvolvimento dos média principalmente a radiodifusão no início, e depois a televisão, foi um grande instrumento de propaganda política para os países africanos recém-independentes. Cada país estabelece uma transmissão de rádio para se libertar de qualquer outra dependência. Foi concebido como um grande instrumento de divulgação de ideologias para a população. As formas de comunicação (verbal, não verbal, escrita, etc.), o poder e a revolução das palavras e imagens no mundo e em África, e a evolução no Congo, da comunicação oral à digital, são o foco deste relatório, que procura compreender o que levou a República Democrática do Congo ao novo ambiente mediático no qual a palavra e a imagem misturam-se.Part of this work was supervised in the scope of the project “Audire - Audio Repository: saving sonic-based memories”, co-funded by the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization and by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology (PTDC-COM-CSS/32159/2017). This has instructed the theoretical framework of the present work, specifically on the role of sound and its relationship with image, in the evolution of the communication models and the respective emancipation of communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Digital Sound Studies

The digital turn has created new opportunities for scholars across disciplines to use sound in their scholarship. This volume’s contributors provide a blueprint for making sound central to research, teaching, and dissemination. They show how digital sound studies has the potential to transform silent, text-centric cultures of communication in the humanities into rich, multisensory experiences that are more inclusive of diverse knowledges and abilities. Drawing on multiple disciplines—including rhetoric and composition, performance studies, anthropology, history, and information science—the contributors to Digital Sound Studies bring digital humanities and sound studies into productive conversation while probing the assumptions behind the use of digital tools and technologies in academic life. In so doing, they explore how sonic experience might transform our scholarly networks, writing processes, research methodologies, pedagogies, and knowledges of the archive

Homeland and ethnic news consumption among Ghanaians in the Washington Metropolitan Area

Among the many applications of the Internet is its use for news. Ghanaian immigrants, like others living away from their country of birth, use the Web to access news from home via ethnic media in their host country or homeland media or both. Employing online surveys and telephone interviews, this study explores the daily use of online media by Ghanaians resident in the Washington metropolitan area to obtain news about their native country. It assesses how factors like demography, length of stay abroad and devices used affect time spent daily on the Internet looking for news as well as the news sources and categories usually patronized. The use of social media to access news daily was also investigated. Descriptive analysis of the data obtained was carried out. Across all the online media types accessed – radio, TV, and website/ newspaper – homeland media was the preference of Ghanaian immigrants while ethnic media was hardly mentioned, most of these news accessed via mobile. Most Ghanaians prefer to read the news online than to listen or watch. Social media was also a very important medium of news, being an essential source for more than 8 out of every 10 respondents surveyed. In addition to being a platform with mass subscription where users read and share news, social media also streams radio and television news programs, replacing the need to visit the websites of the specific news organizations for their news. The advantages the Internet offers including unrestricted access to news across the world and the speed of delivery of such information were also mentioned