The strange world of Roland Barthes: some points of criticism

SUMMARY

Against the background of Mary Wisemen, Sándor Hervey and Vincent Leitch's discussion of Roland Barthes' work, the author discusses some of the important points of criticism against Barthes as a semiologist and as a social critic. In spite of this criticism he comes to the conclusion that Barthes opens new perspectives for communication science concerning meaning and in particular meaning created in and through media such as photography.     

Suid-Afrikaanse “alternatiewe” rolprente en die Suid-Afrikaanse sosio-politieke werklikheid (Deel 2)

SUMMARY

Due to rapid social, economic and political change, many aspects of the traditional male sex role have been rendered increasingly dysfunctional and obsolete. This has led to a period of destabilisation in traditional gender roles and relationships, prompting sex role strain and a contemporary ‘crisis of masculinity’. This alleged crisis has given rise to renewed interest in the male sex role, providing the impetus for a new field of study in the eighties known as Men's Studies. This article examines the underlying assumptions of the so-called crisis of masculinity theory, and the factors that have precipitated this alleged crisis, namely the rise of feminism and the women's movement, the gay liberation movement, the declining emotional and mental health of men, and the rise of the mass media and popular culture.     

Pornografie en beïnvloeding

SUMMARY

IN this article the author tries to establish the reason or reasons for the wide divergence in research findings con-cerning the potentiality of pornography to exert influence. He traces it, amongst others, to two factors:

1. The complex, basically double-edged nature of porno graphy (defined as approving portrayal of dehumanized sex): on the one hand it entails something pleasant (the sex aspect of it), on the other hand something repugnant (the element of dehumanization in it).

2. A too restricted view of the concept of influence, together with its related concept change. Change does not only entail change of conduct; change in outlook is relevant change too.

He points out that after World War II, in the light of the large divergence of opinions and convictions concerning the potentiality of pornography to bring about change, there was an increasing demand for experimental verification of opinions and convictions regarding the potentiality of pornography to influence.

He focuses on one important post-war effort to provide experimental support for the conviction that any detrimental effect of pornography is so slight that it is negligible: the inquiry of the American Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, whose Report (1970) had such a profound influence throughout the world.

He points out a number of gross shortcomings of the Report, the most important being the non-representativeness of the experimental sample, the limited period of experimentation, the remoteness from real life of the experimental situations, the erratic experimental model, and the selective reporting by the Main Report of the findings contained in the Technical Reports.

On the basis of a broad definition of the concepts pornography, influence, change and harm, the author comes to the conclusion that pornography undoubtedly has the ability to influence, even to the point of harm, and harm not only on an individual, but also of a communal nature.     

Forensic access to Windows Mobile pim.vol and other Embedded Database (EDB) volumes

Forensic examination of Windows Mobile devices and devices running its successor Windows Phone 7 remains relevant for the digital forensic community. In these devices, the file pim.vol is a Microsoft Embedded Database (EDB) volume that contains information related to contacts, appointments, call history, speed-dial settings and tasks. Current literature shows that analysis of the pim.vol file is less than optimal. We succeeded in reverse-engineering significant parts of the EDB volume format and this article presents our current understanding of the format. In addition we provide a mapping from internal column identifiers to human readable application-level property names for the pim.vol database. We implemented a parser and compared our results to the traditional approach using an emulator and the API provided by the Windows CE operating system. We were able to recover additional databases, additional properties per record and unallocated records.     

Between transitional justice and politics: Reparations in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Reparations are a major component of transitional justice in the aftermath of widespread abuse. However, the implementation of reparations programmes often follows the logic of transitional politics, where short-term political interests trump victims’ rights. Using the South African case as a cautionary tale, this article shows that reparations are susceptible to political instrumentalisation and evaluates the role of international redress norms in safeguarding victims’ rights. Civil society groups have used the right to reparations as a basis for political contestation of inadequate reparations programmes and focused primarily on the broadening of redress norms. However, the existing international legislation fails to protect victims’ rights to reparations from political manoeuvring. In conclusion, the article highlights the need for international redress norms to be consolidated and made more concrete in order to more effectively circumscribe the scope states have to avoid meeting their reparations obligations.     

Is regional government-governance nexus delivering on social sustainability promises? Empirical evidence from Moranbah in Australia

Social sustainability, in theory, should result in responsiveness to change, a durable sense of community trust and interdependent institutional structures. However, recent studies indicate that current sustainability efforts of regional local government are not yielding anticipated outcomes. Drawing on two social theories of Henri Lefebvre, this paper offers an empirical analysis of the ability of the government–governance nexus to deliver on social sustainability promises in Moranbah in regional Australia. Study findings revealed that the Moranbah government–governance nexus suffers from adversarial relationships between key actors that result in a distrust of politics and power, the absence of a defined governance system, community alienation, and State Government dominance and intervention. These experiences of the government–governance nexus have rendered social sustainability a distant hope for Moranbah’s residents. This paper suggests a reform in sustainability policies to improve the current situation in the case region, and theoretical propositions for future research.     

Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public during the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike

This study investigated partisan perceptions of hostile bias in news coverage of the 1997 Teamsters Union strike against United Parcel Service (UPS), and the processes by which Teamster and UPS partisans formed impressions of public opinion regarding the strike. As predicted, both partisan groups perceived neutral news coverage as biased against their respective sides. However, perceptions of hostile media bias did not produce corresponding perceptions of hostile public opinion; instead, partisans appeared to rely on their personal opinions when estimating the opinions of others. Nonpartisan control-group subjects, however, did infer public opinion in part from their subjective assessments of news content. Findings suggest that level of involvement is crucial in predicting the effect that perceived media coverage of social issues will have on perceptions of public opinion regarding those issues.     

Relative Political and Value Proximity in Mediated Public Diplomacy: The Effect of State-Level Homophily on International Frame Building

This article applies the homophily thesis to public diplomacy and offers an empirical examination of a country's success in its mediated public diplomacy efforts. It analyzes international frame building, the process of creating or changing media frames in the international communications arena, by applying it to the case of Israeli mediated public diplomacy efforts during the war in Gaza in the winter of 2008–2009. The article claims that one way to use the homophily thesis in empirical analyses of international frame-building campaigns in conflicts is to measure the political and value proximity of a country promoting frames to other countries. Yet, proximity should be measured relatively rather than in absolute terms. Therefore, one should look not only at the dyadic proximity between two actors (i.e., Country A that attempts to promote its frames to Country C), but at the relative proximity between Countries A and C considering the proximity between the rival Country B and the target Country C. The study proposes a model and a method to facilitate empirical analysis of this claim. Using sophisticated computerized content analysis, our analyses demonstrate that relative proximity is related to successful international frame building in the hypothesized direction: The closer the relative proximity between Israel and a foreign country, the greater the acceptance of Israel's views.     

Modernisation and Time Preferences in Tanzania: Evidence from a Large-Scale Elicitation Exercise

Assumptions about individual time preferences are important for explanations of poverty and development. Data from a large-scale elicitation exercise in Tanzania show significantly higher levels of impatience in urban areas than in rural areas. This result remains robust to adding controls for socio-economic differences between rural and urban areas, which possibly correlate with time preferences. We attribute this to differences in ‘modernisation’ between urban and rural areas, with modernisation leading to increased impatience. This is corroborated by the observed positive correlation between impatience and education; the latter being an important vehicle of modernisation for traditional societies in Tanzania.     

A model for the translation of news agency texts (Sapa) for radio (OFM) news

Abstract

Radio news differs from news provided by other media. According to Oosthuizen (1996), radio is an alerting medium. Leiter, Harriss and Johnson (2000) refer to this attribute as immediacy. The time available to news is very limited and this is why radio news stories are condensed into only a few sentences. Furthermore, news for broadcast is written in a conversational style, because it is heard and not read. Simple, short sentences are used; adjectives and adverbs are kept to a minimum; and strong, active verbs are used rather than passives. In the case of news wires, such as the South African Press Association (known as Sapa), news reports are written for print media. Therefore, bulletin producers need to edit these texts according to the requirements for radio news. In a bilingual or multilingual newsroom a more problematic situation arises, namely that all these texts (originally intended for use in print) need to be translated for a radio news bulletin and the radio station's specific audience. This article aims to describe how translation is used in the operational functioning of a radio newsroom, with a specific focus on OFM – a bilingual commercial radio station broadcasting to the Free State, Northern Cape, North West and southern parts of Gauteng, in South Africa. OFM's bulletin producers therefore not only edit news texts, but also translate them from English into Afrikaans. Certain strategies are followed to edit the original texts, but as there are also translation processes involved and specific translation problems which need to be addressed, appropriate translation strategies need to be identified. This study uses Christiane Nord's functionalist model (specifically her looping model) to describe the broad methodological framework in which these translating and editing (or transediting) processes take place at OFM. The study and findings will also show how certain elements of the looping model need to be adjusted in the translation of Sapa texts for OFM News.