Journalism & Communication Technology

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    Digital storytelling: A unique account of Namibian culture: Paper presented at a conference, Kingston, Jamaica.
    (n.p., 2008) Brown, Emily; Black, Ella
    Storytelling has always been an oral tradition in Namibia. The Oshiwambo, Otji-Herero, Nama/Damara and San cultures have used storytelling as a means to preserve their culture and to ensure continuity. This Paper discusses the implications of the digital preservation of culture, which has been, until recently, captured orally. The implications of such a tradition are evident and, therefore, need to be researched. It will further examine the nuances and ethos that become altered in the process of digitalization, which are important issues to consider in our technocratic society. Thus, as mass communication educators, we seek to provide some of the answers to the convergence of technology and storytelling. For instance, what is necessary for the culture to continue? What could be lost? What could be gained? These questions would help to facilitate discussions with Namibians in order to understand the impact of technology on storytelling.
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    Media and celebrity: Towards a postmodern understanding of the role of reality television in the development of new forms of South African/African celebrity.
    (2009) De Sibandze, Elva Gómez; Garside, Damian
    In our paper we deal with the issue of media celebrity in a South African context, focusing on the role reality television has played in regard to emergent forms of new South African celebrity, and determining the social and cultural meaning of these emergent forms in an African socio-political and cultural context. The paper discusses the way in which such celebrities and local audiences’ fascination with them are constructed. We further analyze indigenous and “imported” reality television forms and formats in our investigation in order to explore the phenomenon from the perspective of such antithetical binaries as stardom and celebrity, private identity and public personality, dramatic art/and dramatized reality, and entertainment/ exploitation. We raise issues that are central to understanding the way in which the media functions in postmodern South Africa, assessing the way in which reality TV and reality TV celebrities reflect either an “empowering” freeing up of cultural spaces, or, alternatively, a closing down of such cultural spaces as an expression of late capitalist/postmodern “comodification” and of increasingly invasive forms of technological surveillance – famously expressed by Michel Foucault with his notion of the “panopticon.” This critique, expressed in its strongest form, views reality television as destroying essential ontological distinctions between reality and media image in constructing a virtual realm of the celebrity “real” (here Baudrillard’s notions of the “spectacle” and the “simulacrum” are most apposite). In regard to what is, for post-apartheid South Africa, the crucial issue of identity, we consider the degree to which reality television exploits postmodern anxieties such as the fear of loss of value, status and identity as part of wider transnational and globalizing processes of social, cultural and psychological dislocation.
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    Missing the beat: Mainstream media mirror relevance of community media in election coverage in Namibia.
    (Conference of African Journalism Educators (CAJE), Forum for African Media Educators (FAME), 2009) Brown, Emily
    In the Department Media Technology experiential learning has always been of the utmost importance. Even though Experiential Learning is a credit-bearing component in the undergraduate Journalism and Communication Technology Programme, it was felt that a Campus media outlet would ensure that such practice-oriented training would be available throughout the Programme. The Campus Media outlet in essence became the in-house training facility for trainee journalists prior to entering the journalism profession. In September 2004 – just prior to the National and Presidential Elections in Namibia - the Echoes News Agency was piloted.
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    Science journalism education: A curriculum project for South Africa, Namibia and Uganda.
    (2009) Brown, Emily
    This report provides details of a Study and information-gathering tour - through the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs - of esteemed American universities and media institutions by three journalism educators from Africa. The purpose of the tour was to consult and network with media experts, academics and journalists in order to gain insight into and collect material which would serve to inform an African-oriented curriculum in Science Journalism. The three academics who undertook the tour are Dr. Pedro Diederichs, Head of the Journalism Department at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa, Ms Emily Brown, Head of the Media Technology Deapartment at the Polythechnic of Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia, and Dr. George Lugulambi, Head of the Journalism Department at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Ms Janet Donaghy, Program Officer in the Voluntary Visitors’ Division in the U.S. Ms Sheila Malan, Cultural Affairs Specialist at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa, coordinated the Program. Mr. Ray Castillo, DiVice Chancellor of the American Cultural Centre in Windhoek provided logistical support, as well as the Head of the American Cultural Centre in Kampala, Uganda. Ms Joyce Meadows, English Language Officer from Washington D.C., served as the group’s Escort during the two-week Study Tour in the United States of America. The Program allowed for visits to universities and media institutions in New York, Denver/Boulder and Tampa/St Petersburg. Approximately three days were spent in each of the three States visited.