Teaching HIV/AIDS

Posted by Tanja Estella Bosch | 24 May, 2007

I've just finished teaching a brand new seminar on Health Communication to third year media studies students. The course content included discussions and critical reading on HIV/AIDS and the media, health communication campaigns, health reporting and narrative journalism. Students produced annotated bibliographies, a researched magazine article and a final academic essay or creative project of their choice. I'd like to use this category to reflect on this teaching experience, and to share some of the student work.

Teaching a seminar to worldly wise third year media students is challenging. Teaching anything to do with HIV/AIDS is even more challenging. But this has turned out to be one of the the best courses I've ever taught, and judging by the student feedback, it's been similarly stimulating for them. After the initial scepticism, by the end of the semester, these were some of the responses during an informal feedback session: "I am very surprised at how much I didn't actually know about Aids"; "This course was better than I anticipated and taught me not only about Aids but about myself as well"; "Very stimulating and I learnt a lot".

But more about this later...Here's the first installement of student work. Read a short story entitled Nosebleeds by Masande Ntshanga.

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Confessions of a backyard ethnographer

Posted by Tanja Estella Bosch | 21 May, 2007
I've always had methodological aspirations of being an ethnographer (of some kind), though truthfully, the only real piece of ethnographic work I've ever done was my doctoral dissertation. As I plan my research programme for those wonderfully teaching free June/July weeks (yay!), it occured to me that I should reflect a bit on that experience before moving forward in new directions.
This (rather lengthy) post describes my ethnography of a community radio station in Cape Town - referred to here as Radio X. In negotiating the line between insider and outsider, I found a comfortable space from which to "understand and interpret". Given my extensive involvement in the organization that I was studying, a reflexive or narrative ethnography seemed the logical methodological choice.

Taking into account that ethnography is a useful way of explaining how participation is enacted and constructed, these reflections provide a brief description of the ethnography conducted, and in moments of self-indulgent self-reflexivity reflect on the process, particularly the outcomes which led to exclusion from the community, a common but infrequently discussed risk.

Though, since South African radio, particularly community initiatives, remain under-researched, I argue that ethnography still remains a valuable methodological tool to understand it, despite the challenges one will invariably face.
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Family portraits

Posted by Tanja Estella Bosch | 21 May, 2007
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Research on talk radio

Posted by Tanja Estella Bosch | 17 May, 2007

Any talk radio listeners (567MW) out there? I'm currently conducting research into talk radio, democracy and the public sphere, and would appreciate your assistance with completing (and circulating) a listener questionnaire. Please email me if you'd like to receive the questionnaire, or post your comments.

Read more about talk radio below.

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Published research

Posted by Tanja Estella Bosch | 14 May, 2007

(downloadable pdf files coming soon)

Academic Publications

Book chapters

“HIV is gold, AIDS is platinum: Community radio for social change” in Howard, S & Singhal, A. 2003. The children of Africa confront AIDS: from vulnerability to possibility. Ohio University Press.

“Entertainment-Education” in Kovalchick, A. & Dawson, K. (eds). An Educational Encyclopedia. 2004. ABC-Clio.

Biographies and programmes: Youth and workers in South Africa. In Magnuson, D. & Baizerman, M. Youth Work in Conflict Societies. 2006. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

“Theorizing Citizens’ Media: A rhizomatic approach” in Kidd, D., Rodriguez, C., Stein, L. (eds) Making Our Media: Global Initiatives Toward a Democratic Public Sphere. Hampton Press (forthcoming, 2007).

Online coloured identities: A virtual ethnography. In At the end of the rainbow: Power, politics and identity in post-apartheid South African media. HSRC Press (forthcoming, 2007).

Journal articles

“A case studio of community radio in South Africa” in Transformations Online Journal (2005).

“AIDS is gold, HIV is platinum”: Entertainment-education approaches to AIDS education. In Postamble Vol 2.2, 2006. www.africanstudies.uct.ac.za/postamble/vol2-2/radio.pdf

“Ek sê, heita! Kwaito and the construction of community. In Communicatio Vol 32 (1) of (2) 2006.

Radio as protest: The history of Bush Radio. In Journal of Radio Studies. Volume 13, Number 2, 2006

Riding the Waves: Community Radio in Jamaica, Suriname and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. In SACOMM Conference Proceedings, Refereed. South African Communication Association, 2006.

In the Pink: Gay radio in South Africa. In Feminist Media Studies vol 7, no 3 (forthcoming, Sept 2007)

Community radio and identity in post-apartheid South Africa. Forthcoming in Communicare, 2007)

Non-academic writing:

Sustaining community radio stations. In i4d April 2007. Vol V no.4. www. I4donline.net.

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Welcome!

Posted by Tanja Estella Bosch | 14 May, 2007

Welcome to my blog, created as part of a blogging workshop conducted by the Centre for Educational Technology here at UCT. This space will be used to share some of my writing, to talk about my ongoing research into community radio, to reflect on my teaching and pedagogical philosophies, and to introduce you to my family (probably the most important category of all!). At some point, bandwidth permitting, I plan to share with you my range of documentaries and world music programmes via a podcast. But for now, enjoy, and comment freely!

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