Identity, context and mobile media: A critical digital literacy service learning course in a South African township
- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Dalvit, Lorenzo
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Dalvit, Lorenzo
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468195 , vital:77029 , ISBN 978-84-09-45476-1 , doi: 10.21125/edulearn.2022.1419
- Description: In this paper we discuss a critical digital literacy service learning initiative involving post-graduate students in Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University in Makhanda (South Africa). As part of their studies, such students co-develop and teach a small-scale, non-credit-bearing short course on mobile critical digital literacy skills to learners in a township school. In South African terms, a township is an (often marginalised) area, present in almost every settlement, in which people classified as Blacks under apartheid were expected to live and to a large extent still do. As a microcosm of the diverse and still profoundly unequal South African reality, Makhanda offers ample opportunities for contact and collaboration across the geographic, socio-economic and digital divides. The Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies, recognised as one of the best on the African Continent, partners with a number of local organisations to support community upliftment and mutual learning. Community engagement, of which service learning is but one expression, is recognised as an integral component of academic activities for university staff and students. Rhodes University offers dedicated training and provides institutional support for activities such as the one discussed here. What makes our approach somehow unique is the adoption of photo voice as a pedagogical device in teaching and learning about identity construction in a marginalised context. Under the guidance of postgraduate students and their lecturers, learners learn about the technical aspects of taking photos to represent their identities using their mobile phone. Such photos are then used as a point of departure for facilitated group discussions about (self)representations, the social construction of identities and the importance of understanding these in relation to their lived context. In this paper we document and reflect on the conceptualisation and first iteration of the digital literacy service learning course, drawing some lessons for the future.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Dalvit, Lorenzo
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468195 , vital:77029 , ISBN 978-84-09-45476-1 , doi: 10.21125/edulearn.2022.1419
- Description: In this paper we discuss a critical digital literacy service learning initiative involving post-graduate students in Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University in Makhanda (South Africa). As part of their studies, such students co-develop and teach a small-scale, non-credit-bearing short course on mobile critical digital literacy skills to learners in a township school. In South African terms, a township is an (often marginalised) area, present in almost every settlement, in which people classified as Blacks under apartheid were expected to live and to a large extent still do. As a microcosm of the diverse and still profoundly unequal South African reality, Makhanda offers ample opportunities for contact and collaboration across the geographic, socio-economic and digital divides. The Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies, recognised as one of the best on the African Continent, partners with a number of local organisations to support community upliftment and mutual learning. Community engagement, of which service learning is but one expression, is recognised as an integral component of academic activities for university staff and students. Rhodes University offers dedicated training and provides institutional support for activities such as the one discussed here. What makes our approach somehow unique is the adoption of photo voice as a pedagogical device in teaching and learning about identity construction in a marginalised context. Under the guidance of postgraduate students and their lecturers, learners learn about the technical aspects of taking photos to represent their identities using their mobile phone. Such photos are then used as a point of departure for facilitated group discussions about (self)representations, the social construction of identities and the importance of understanding these in relation to their lived context. In this paper we document and reflect on the conceptualisation and first iteration of the digital literacy service learning course, drawing some lessons for the future.
- Full Text:
Liberatory violence or the gift: paths to decoloniality in Black Panther
- Mabasa, Xiletelo, Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Authors: Mabasa, Xiletelo , Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455509 , vital:75435 , http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a7
- Description: Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its foregrounding of the persistent social injustices engendered by colonialism and slavery (what Aníbal Quijano (2000: 533) terms' coloniality') and black people's struggles to overcome them. As a representational tactic in approaching this theme, the Hollywood blockbuster draws on the imaginings of Afrofuturism, which variously endorses radical or more conciliatory approaches to decoloniality. This southern theoretical approach and the critique of coloniality offered by Afrofuturism frame our exploration of how the film positions the hero, T'Challa and the villain, Erik Killmonger, as embodiments of contrasting approaches to emancipation from colonialism's entrenched legacy. Us-ing a structuralist approach that draws on the narrative models of Tsvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, we analyse the film's approach to decoloniality by examining the relationship be-tween T'Challa and Killmonger as the protagonist and antagonist re-spectively. The analysis reveals the limitations of the film's construction of the hero's and villain's understandings of the path to liberation. Ra-ther than offering a revolutionary remedy for the injustices of colonial-ism and its aftermath, the film embraces a liberal standpoint that re-mains palatable to the white establishment, both within Hollywood and the broader socio-political milieu.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mabasa, Xiletelo , Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455509 , vital:75435 , http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a7
- Description: Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its foregrounding of the persistent social injustices engendered by colonialism and slavery (what Aníbal Quijano (2000: 533) terms' coloniality') and black people's struggles to overcome them. As a representational tactic in approaching this theme, the Hollywood blockbuster draws on the imaginings of Afrofuturism, which variously endorses radical or more conciliatory approaches to decoloniality. This southern theoretical approach and the critique of coloniality offered by Afrofuturism frame our exploration of how the film positions the hero, T'Challa and the villain, Erik Killmonger, as embodiments of contrasting approaches to emancipation from colonialism's entrenched legacy. Us-ing a structuralist approach that draws on the narrative models of Tsvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, we analyse the film's approach to decoloniality by examining the relationship be-tween T'Challa and Killmonger as the protagonist and antagonist re-spectively. The analysis reveals the limitations of the film's construction of the hero's and villain's understandings of the path to liberation. Ra-ther than offering a revolutionary remedy for the injustices of colonial-ism and its aftermath, the film embraces a liberal standpoint that re-mains palatable to the white establishment, both within Hollywood and the broader socio-political milieu.
- Full Text:
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