Brand Innovation and Value-Creating Practices of the City of Johannesburg’s Twitter Community

Abstract

Brands facilitating and sustaining healthy brand communities on social networks such as Twitter benefit from collaborative engagements where members are inspired to suggest innovative ideas, solve problems and enjoy a sense of commitment to their social membership co-creative space. We explored how brand innovation practices contribute to the collective value-creating practices within the social media-based brand community hosted by the official City of Johannesburg (CoJ) Twitter account. This purposive sample include 1,232 tweets during Youth Day, followed by one in-depth, semi-structured interview with the social media manager of the CoJ Twitter account to confirm and contextualise findings. Thematic analysis in a qualitative design found five of six brand innovation practices, namely animation, openness, linking, structuring and theorisation. The CoJ social media-based brand community was co-created innovatively owing to high levels of engagement, room for fun and effective communication on service delivery issues so that the brand community continuously increases its membership and commitment. Findings confirmed eight of twelve value-creating practices, namely welcoming, empathising, governing, evangelising, justifying, grooming, customising and commoditising. The healthier a brand community, the more extensive the variety of innovation practices for a brand.     

Understanding the Magic of Credibility for Political Leaders: A Case of India and Narendra Modi

The field of political marketing has majorly benefited from the use of social media platforms. This has been true both for eastern and western contexts. The primary areas in political marketing that have majorly benefited from the social media usage have been the political leader and the evaluations of the leader by the voters. In the Indian context too, the use of social media techniques has been hailed as the Holy Grail of political marketing. This estimation is quite apposite. Nevertheless, what must not be forgotten is that the complexities of the bonding between political leaders and voters are not only premised primarily on the efficacy of social media techniques but also include other key dimensions. Thus, this article focuses on the importance of credibility as a key dimension. This dimension is inevitable to make social media techniques as effective as they are in political marketing. To substantiate this, we have comprehensively engaged with the fields such as traits of political leaders, crisis management and collaboration. These deliberations have been contextualized to the case of Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. Further, these deliberations culminate in an effective framework. Academicians and practitioners of political marketing can extensively utilize this framework.     

中国媒体产业法律制度创新初探

目前中国媒体产业的法律制度变革面临着巨大的压力和广泛的动力 ,在澄清观念之后 ,其产业立法应遵循四大原则。在从宪法到地方部门规章的法律体系中平衡政府、媒体、公众三者的利益。在产业组织政策、产业结构政策和产业分布政策的创新过程中 ,寻求产业发展的推动力和制动力的均衡 ,通过法律制度创新降低市场交易成本 ,中国媒体产业才能在经济、政治、文化三大领域内取得效益最大化。     

关于“三贴近”的传播学解读

我党提出的贴近实际、贴近生活、贴近群众的“三贴近”原则,鲜明地体现了新闻报道的客观真实性、迅速及时性和大众性;它不仅丰富和发展了马克思主义的新闻传播理论,而且对新闻传播工作的实践也具有重要的指导意义。     

Media Freedom and Political Debate in the Digital Era

This article examines the impact of online expression on theories of media freedom. While media freedom has generally been justified instrumentally, the opportunities for expression via the Internet may require greater emphasis on the interests of the individual speaker. Despite this development, this article shows how a small number of speakers will still command a much wider audience and have greater influence over political debate. For such speakers the approach to media freedom devised in the mass media era will remain applicable.     

关于媒体犯罪案件报道的思考

媒体报道犯罪案件是现代民主的需要 ,也是我国政治文明建设进步的体现 ,公安机关的侦查部门应与时俱进 ,以积极的姿态与媒体合作 ,建立新闻发言人制度 ,搞好犯罪案件报道工作。在犯罪案件报道中 ,媒体和侦查部门都要明确指导思想 ,注意导向 ,防止案件报道涉及泄密与教唆。     

Symbolic state-building in contemporary Russia

Vladimir Putin has made state-building a central goal of his presidency and recent scholarship has demonstrated that Russian formal institutions have indeed been deliberately reformed. Unlike studies that ass’ess state-building vis-à-vis a particular outcome, our research examines what kind of state Russian political elites seek to build, and focuses on symbolic state-building strategies. To capture symbolic state-building in the Putin era, we examine the Pryamaya Liniya broadcasts: annual, high-profile TV broadcasts in which citizens pose questions to the president. We find that a broad range of formal institutions appear to be central to Putin’s state-building project, a finding that runs counter to claims that governance is largely deinstitutionalized, informal and personal. We argue that symbolic state-building seeks to reconcile personalism and institutionalism, by conveying a dual image of a state in citizens’ everyday lives – emphasizing both formal institutions, while also affirming Putin as the personal guarantor of the state’s authority.     

The emergence of prophetic ministries in Botswana: self-positioning and appropriation of new media

ABSTRACT

In the past two decades or so, Botswana has witnessed a spectacular growth of prophetic Christianity and experienced a media revolution through the emerging use of new media. While studies have generally focused on either the growth of Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity or the new media revolution, little attention has been paid to the characteristics of emerging prophetic ministries, entailing the appropriation of new media and how this has accelerated the development of religious practices in Botswana. In light of positioning and mediatisation theories, this paper examines the ways in which prophetic ministries position themselves and shape the religious landscape of Botswana and how prophetic ministries have adopted and appropriated the use of new media technologies. It argues that the synergy between prophetic ministries and technological developments of new media opens a new space for cultural production of religious practices and experiences as well as religious imagination, experience and identity.     

Religious Innovation and Competition in Contemporary African Christianity

ABSTRACT

This introductory essay lays out the main themes of a special issue of Journal of Contemporary African Studies which brings together six empirically grounded papers by African social scientists of different disciplinary backgrounds. These works touch on various aspects of the social impact of religious innovation and competition in present day African Christianity. They represent the first fruits on the social science side of an interdisciplinary initiative that made 23 research grants for theologians and social scientists to study Christianity and social change in contemporary Africa. These articles focus on a variety of dynamics in contemporary African religion (mostly Christianity), including gender, health and healing, social media, entrepreneurship, and inter-religious borrowing and accommodation. The editors conclude that the research and learning reflected in this volume will enhance understanding of religion’s vital entanglement in contemporary African society. The articles reveal problematic ethical and psychological dynamics in some of these new movements, particularly among some of the neo-Pentecostal groups. Yet the authors are determined to go beyond perspectives that are overly fixated with African problems and victimisation. They are keen to explore opportunities for understanding African agency and African wellsprings of hope. The editors conclude that scholars of religion and religiosity in Africa need to invest new conceptual and methodological energy in researching what it means to be actively religious in Africa today.     

新媒体发展对大学生思想表达的影响

新媒体已成为中国社会文化生活的中心和推进中国社会成长的新力量。而新媒体传播机制的渗透性、舆论生产方式的煽动性、组织动员的误导性以及对接方式的虚拟性对大学生的思想表达产生了一定的负面影响。因此,在新媒体环境下如何占领新媒体舆论高地、健全高校新媒体的信息监管机制、培育新媒体中的高校意见领袖团队,多角度利用新媒体对大学生进行思想引导和道德培养,本文提出了一定的对策。