Crime and punishment Mzansi style: an exploration of the discursive production of criminality and popular justice in South Africa’s Daily Sun
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Daily Sun (South Africa) , Tabloid newpapers -- South Africa , Crime in mass media , Justice in mass media , Police in mass media , Newpapers -- South Africa , Newpapers -- Objectivity -- South Africa , Women -- Violence against -- South Africa -- Press coverage , Witchcraft -- South Africa -- Press coverage , Police -- South Africa -- Press coverage
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/44419 , vital:25406
- Description: The highly popular South African tabloid the Daily Sun, established post-apartheid in 2002, is known for its sensationalist and controversial reporting of black township life. Read by over five million black working class readers, much of its reporting concerns the crimes experienced by them and their struggles for justice. The extraordinarily high rate of violent crime in township areas for which South Africa became infamous during the 1980s did not decrease as much as hoped after the political transition in 1994 and crime overshadowed the first decades of the new administration, adding to the frustrations generated by the slow pace of social and economic reform. Part of the Daily Sun’s success can be attributed to how, around these linked concerns, it fashions for its readers a particular discursive world, Sunland. It is the phatic relationship that the tabloid maintains between itself and its readers which forms the foundation upon which this textual study rests. In approaching the tabloid’s representations of crime I draw on cultural criminological understandings of crime as culture and the formative relationship in this regard between crime and the media. As a preeminent site of cultural production in contemporary society, the media contribute to the ongoing definition of what constitutes crime, who is criminal and what counts as justice. This constructivist approach is congruent with Foucault’s notions of discourse and the subject, and I argue that the various competing discourses about crime and justice which appear in the paper establish a set of subjectivities with which its readers may identity. The thesis explores the rhetorical and discursive means by which such subject positions are constructed within the ‘grid of intelligibility’ created by the Daily Sun’s reportage, and using the spatial metaphor of the ‘map’ I trace the contours of the Daily Sun’s domain with regard to crime and popular justice. To this end, the approach taken is a qualitative one which draws eclectically on a variety of interpretive methods, including semiotic, narrative and discourse analysis. Using these, I map the relations between People’s Justice, the police, gender relations and witchcraft crimes, four areas chosen from a broad thematic content analysis of the complete set of editions from 2011. I show how these are not discreet but co-constructed areas within the coverage, drawing their meaning mutually from a range of conflictual relationships derived from the conditions of post-apartheid social life.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Daily Sun (South Africa) , Tabloid newpapers -- South Africa , Crime in mass media , Justice in mass media , Police in mass media , Newpapers -- South Africa , Newpapers -- Objectivity -- South Africa , Women -- Violence against -- South Africa -- Press coverage , Witchcraft -- South Africa -- Press coverage , Police -- South Africa -- Press coverage
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/44419 , vital:25406
- Description: The highly popular South African tabloid the Daily Sun, established post-apartheid in 2002, is known for its sensationalist and controversial reporting of black township life. Read by over five million black working class readers, much of its reporting concerns the crimes experienced by them and their struggles for justice. The extraordinarily high rate of violent crime in township areas for which South Africa became infamous during the 1980s did not decrease as much as hoped after the political transition in 1994 and crime overshadowed the first decades of the new administration, adding to the frustrations generated by the slow pace of social and economic reform. Part of the Daily Sun’s success can be attributed to how, around these linked concerns, it fashions for its readers a particular discursive world, Sunland. It is the phatic relationship that the tabloid maintains between itself and its readers which forms the foundation upon which this textual study rests. In approaching the tabloid’s representations of crime I draw on cultural criminological understandings of crime as culture and the formative relationship in this regard between crime and the media. As a preeminent site of cultural production in contemporary society, the media contribute to the ongoing definition of what constitutes crime, who is criminal and what counts as justice. This constructivist approach is congruent with Foucault’s notions of discourse and the subject, and I argue that the various competing discourses about crime and justice which appear in the paper establish a set of subjectivities with which its readers may identity. The thesis explores the rhetorical and discursive means by which such subject positions are constructed within the ‘grid of intelligibility’ created by the Daily Sun’s reportage, and using the spatial metaphor of the ‘map’ I trace the contours of the Daily Sun’s domain with regard to crime and popular justice. To this end, the approach taken is a qualitative one which draws eclectically on a variety of interpretive methods, including semiotic, narrative and discourse analysis. Using these, I map the relations between People’s Justice, the police, gender relations and witchcraft crimes, four areas chosen from a broad thematic content analysis of the complete set of editions from 2011. I show how these are not discreet but co-constructed areas within the coverage, drawing their meaning mutually from a range of conflictual relationships derived from the conditions of post-apartheid social life.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
"I want to kill myself!": identity documents and mental health in the South African Daily Sun tabloid
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143549 , vital:38256 , ISBN , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: An Identity Document (ID) is needed by South Africans to study, apply for a pension or get married. However, Home Affairs, the state department responsible for issuing them, is poorly managed. The popular Daily Sun tabloid newspaper mediates for its five million working class readers the frustration caused by this incompetency in its “Horror Affairs” column. Readers tell their stories about (not) getting their IDs, stories often of suicide, depression and “giving up” on life. Using a Lacanian frame, and through a close reading of “Horror Affairs” texts, I argue that this tabloid plays a therapeutic role for its socially marginalised readers by mediating the “invisibility” engendered by the modernising state and its administrative technologies. Given the concern about high rates of mental health illness in South Africa, the research also demonstrates how popular culture forms can alert health care practitioners to issues which may otherwise go unnoticed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143549 , vital:38256 , ISBN , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: An Identity Document (ID) is needed by South Africans to study, apply for a pension or get married. However, Home Affairs, the state department responsible for issuing them, is poorly managed. The popular Daily Sun tabloid newspaper mediates for its five million working class readers the frustration caused by this incompetency in its “Horror Affairs” column. Readers tell their stories about (not) getting their IDs, stories often of suicide, depression and “giving up” on life. Using a Lacanian frame, and through a close reading of “Horror Affairs” texts, I argue that this tabloid plays a therapeutic role for its socially marginalised readers by mediating the “invisibility” engendered by the modernising state and its administrative technologies. Given the concern about high rates of mental health illness in South Africa, the research also demonstrates how popular culture forms can alert health care practitioners to issues which may otherwise go unnoticed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Submission to Press Freedom Commission (PFC) on Media Self-regulation, Co-regulation or Statutory regulation in South Africa:
- Wasserman, Herman, Steenveld, Lynette N, Strelitz, Larry N, Amner, Roderick J, Boshoff, Priscilla A, Mathurine, Jude, Garman, Anthea
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman , Steenveld, Lynette N , Strelitz, Larry N , Amner, Roderick J , Boshoff, Priscilla A , Mathurine, Jude , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143571 , vital:38263 , ISBN , https://www.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/ruhome/documents/JMS Submission to Press Freedom Commission.pdf
- Description: Prof Duncan has outlined the relative merits and demerits of self-regulation, co-regulation and deregulation, with which we are in broad agreement. She has also ably dealt with the three functions of regulatory bodies, namely the setting of ground rules for the industry to ensure best practice; enforcement of these; and adjudication of claims and counter claims re journalistic practice (Duncan 2012, p17). Finally, she has also taken up the issue of the necessity of accepting Third Party Complaints as one of the fundamental mechanisms by which citizens can make complaints on the basis of principle, rather than being personally aggrieved. While we are in broad agreement with her on these issues, we would like to highlight some further points for consideration.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman , Steenveld, Lynette N , Strelitz, Larry N , Amner, Roderick J , Boshoff, Priscilla A , Mathurine, Jude , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143571 , vital:38263 , ISBN , https://www.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/ruhome/documents/JMS Submission to Press Freedom Commission.pdf
- Description: Prof Duncan has outlined the relative merits and demerits of self-regulation, co-regulation and deregulation, with which we are in broad agreement. She has also ably dealt with the three functions of regulatory bodies, namely the setting of ground rules for the industry to ensure best practice; enforcement of these; and adjudication of claims and counter claims re journalistic practice (Duncan 2012, p17). Finally, she has also taken up the issue of the necessity of accepting Third Party Complaints as one of the fundamental mechanisms by which citizens can make complaints on the basis of principle, rather than being personally aggrieved. While we are in broad agreement with her on these issues, we would like to highlight some further points for consideration.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
Diasporic consciousness and Bollywood : South African Indian youth and the meanings they make of Indian film
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Motion pictures -- India , Youth -- South Africa -- Attitudes , East Indians -- South Africa -- Attitudes , Motion picture industry -- India -- Mumbai
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3503 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006249 , Motion pictures -- India , Youth -- South Africa -- Attitudes , East Indians -- South Africa -- Attitudes , Motion picture industry -- India -- Mumbai
- Description: A particular youth identity in the South African Indian diaspora is being forged in a nexus o flocal and global forces . The globalisation of Bollywood and its popularity as a global media and the international commodification of the Indian exotic have occurred at the same time as the valorisation of 'difference' in the local political landscape. Indian youth, as young members of the South African Indian diaspora, are inheritors both of a conservative - yet adaptable - home culture and the marginalised identities of apartheid. However, the tensions between their desire to be recognised as both 'modern' South Africans and as ' traditional ' Indians create a space in which they are able to (re)create for themselves an identity that can encompass both their home cultures and the desires of a Westernised modernity through the tropes of Bollywood. Bollywood speaks to its diasporic audiences through representations of an idealised 'traditional yet modern' India. Although India is not a place of return for this young generation, Bollywood representations of successful diasporic Indian culture and participation in the globalised Bollywood industry through concerts and international award ceremonies has provided an opportunity for young Indians in South Africa to re-examine their local Indian identities and feel invited to re-identify with the global diasporas of India.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Motion pictures -- India , Youth -- South Africa -- Attitudes , East Indians -- South Africa -- Attitudes , Motion picture industry -- India -- Mumbai
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3503 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006249 , Motion pictures -- India , Youth -- South Africa -- Attitudes , East Indians -- South Africa -- Attitudes , Motion picture industry -- India -- Mumbai
- Description: A particular youth identity in the South African Indian diaspora is being forged in a nexus o flocal and global forces . The globalisation of Bollywood and its popularity as a global media and the international commodification of the Indian exotic have occurred at the same time as the valorisation of 'difference' in the local political landscape. Indian youth, as young members of the South African Indian diaspora, are inheritors both of a conservative - yet adaptable - home culture and the marginalised identities of apartheid. However, the tensions between their desire to be recognised as both 'modern' South Africans and as ' traditional ' Indians create a space in which they are able to (re)create for themselves an identity that can encompass both their home cultures and the desires of a Westernised modernity through the tropes of Bollywood. Bollywood speaks to its diasporic audiences through representations of an idealised 'traditional yet modern' India. Although India is not a place of return for this young generation, Bollywood representations of successful diasporic Indian culture and participation in the globalised Bollywood industry through concerts and international award ceremonies has provided an opportunity for young Indians in South Africa to re-examine their local Indian identities and feel invited to re-identify with the global diasporas of India.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
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