| ©SACOMM 2005 |
| ©SACOMM 2005 |
SACOMM President |
SACOMM 2008 CONFERENCE: Communicating in a Global Village Blogging about SACOMM and blogging about blogging. I have been asked to write a blog for the South African Communication Association (SACOMM) Conference. Being asked to write a blog is quite different than the normal often self-indulgence of blogging (if indeed blogging is normal). I don't mean to be pejorative in saying this, but am pointing out that most blogs are written and most importantly solicited for oneself. My own blog is on Mail and Guardian's Thought Leader
website and I view it more as a commentary on South Africa and a few other
things I choose to write about. You can see it at
http://www.thoughtleader.co. I think this is probably the best conceptualisation I
have heard of blogging and even about writing in general. Writing is,
after all, a way of thinking. Few people think of writing in such terms
and students often despair at the idea of writing a term paper, or even worse a
thesis, as they seem to think we academics have the knowledge pre-learnt or
stored up from past studies and research. I sometimes think senior
academic staff should distribute a first draft of a paper for students to see
the chaos and discordant thinking and then see the paper through subsequent
drafts. I often use my blog as a beginning to academic ideas that I either
develop properly or discard as I see fit through the initial writing of
them. But I digress. These ideas trigger a memory of
some concerns that I had at the Balkanisation of the conference into a student
conference and an 'adult' conference (as one unmentioned Professor called
it). I felt that the student sessions should have been held during the
conference as a block during each day so that they could fully participate in
the conference as well as get some extra feedback from the more senior
participants. Blogging about SACOMM raises some of the concerns I
raised in my paper as well as some of the discussions that took place (even if
only obliquely) at the conference. When one talks of blogging one is also
speaking about the audience, which raises questions of access and from an
African perspective one is speaking about an elite in terms of education,
access to the Internet and in wealth. Blogging is, as were many of the
corporate topics presented at SACOMM, the purview of the wealthy and the
elite. The Internet may be ubiquitous in some parts of the
world, but is far from that ideal (perhaps?) in Africa. When I lived in
New York I could find free access points throughout Manhattan, in South Africa
these places are rare or non-existent. The majority of wireless access
points are pay per minute as many of us found to our annoyance at the
conference, despite the cost of the venue. The digital divide often gets
forgotten when some 'bang on' about the wonders of the Internet. Even the
new 'one hundred dollar laptops' are beyond the reach of most Africans and
until the internet becomes accessible these are at best nothing but fancy type
writers and at worst a false promise of the future. As for the conference, I always enjoy the SACOMM
conferences that I have attended as they draw together very disparate
disciplines and it reminds me of the need for critical scholarship in the area
of communication more broadly defined. I think the idea of the digital divide and a
communication divide is very apt for consideration by scholars of communication
in general. Scholars ought to engage these ideas head on and the digital
divide also says a lot about economic and social relations in Africa. The
'Global Village' and Globalisation are often celebrated as miracles, but like
most miracles they are smoke and mirrors, designed to obfuscate (as said by
Keyan Tomaselli). We as
communication scholars must be sure that we don't ignore those across the
divide and truly think of novel ways of including them. Whether this is
in radical design and free forms of publishing, or the challenging of
communication strategies that are merely ways of making more money for clients,
is to try and open up communication channels across Africa.
Report on the SACOMM student's conference 2008 Karen Peters University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban A basic trend of many of the conferences that I have attended is
based on the basic communication model of: "sender - message- receiver", where,
there happens to be fewer "receivers" by the end of the day than "senders" and
more "senders" than would randomly pop-up to transmit their "message" then
leave. Although this may have been the case at the SACOMM students' conference
it did not break the focus of the presenters or those responding to the papers
presented. The beautiful surroundings, great food and spa facilities played
a great role in this year's SACOMM conference at Misty Hills Country Hotel
outside of Johannesburg. Having stayed at this accommodation previously for work related
purposes I was no stranger to the ambience that is Misty Hills, I was however,
unaccustomed to the SACOMM conference procedures and therefore didn't have many
expectations about it. The first item on the agenda was the student conference
that spanned a total of one day, fully sponsored by Nedbank Private Bank - "for
the more affluent clients" - needless to say they start targeting their clients
from a young age, since most of us present were Honours students with no
immediate and/or obvious affluence to us, but hey, if that's what brings in the
money. I realized how broad the field of communications is. Many of the
University of Pretoria students were in the discipline of corporate
communications and utilized terms not typically used in my everyday vernacular.
This was not a hindrance to the conference's intention but was greatly
refreshing in that we got to experience what type of subjects students in the
corporate communications sector were studying. My favourite presentation of the
lot was on the Malume avocado, which, we were told is a cultivar of
avocado specifically grown to bear fruit all year round. By the way, it is
incorrect to use the term avocado pear, just the word avocado to describe the
plant is sufficient. The two presentations done by the CCMS students, Aarif, Simone
and my own (with Sana) were academic presentations focusing on research, theory
and praxis as the main proponents. This was due to the fact that CCMS is a
research based degree, providing an understanding of the real world experience
through a theoretical framework. Having noticed this about the difference in
focus with regard to the UP and UKZN students I tried as best as possible to
tailor my presentation to the present "target market's" interests. This is not
to suggest in any way a "dumbing" down of the facts but a realization that
having no prior knowledge of certain theorists, it many have been necessary to
explain more clearly where, for example, Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding theory
fits in. There were many errors that were made on my part - more specifically
with regard to the technology used (indeed I am not always the well of
knowledge when it comes to these things) but the show must go on - and the
extra curricular drama classes came in handy in this regard. Having exhausted ourselves during the presentations, the lunch
that we were served was great, the free conference gifts of a leather type file
and wallet was beautiful and the timing and co-ordination of the whole event
was done flawlessly thanks to Clarissa Muir, a very charming lecturer from the
University of Pretoria. The SACOMM student conference was a great success and I look
forward to next year's one.
Carnivore, Communication and Conference
Students Cavort at Misty Hills
The Disney-like Misty Hills Hotel and Spa was the venue for the 2008 SACOMM Conference. Sessions were held in the Springbok, Nyala, Bali and Pelindaba rooms. Banquests were offered at the Carnivore eatery (crocodile, warthog, eland, anyone?). Seventy-eight authors and 58 papers were listed on the main programme, and 30 on the student (Hons, undergrad) day. Some of those listed, however, turned out to be absent signifiers, structured absences, who were perhaps reading Peters by the pond (many ponds dotted the Hotel grounds), or maybe they never got to the venue. Of the hundred registered delegates, 24 were from UKZN, of which 16 have been affiliated with CCMS in one way or another since 1985. The remainder were from the tranquil, pastoral, Pietermartizburg campus. Durban students had to travel 700kms to meet with their PMB peers (David, Sandra, Michelle, Dr Nicola Jones and Prof Simon Burton of Sociology) who are but 70kms from Durban (`n' to the power of 10 to use stat. speak). This was a little weird for them (and me). The lack of awareness about each others' programmes and personnel was a talking point amongst the CCMS students.
Delegates came from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, USA, UK, The Netherlands with one co-author listed from Australia. Netherlands delegates were there in force, both as student and staff delegates, from Han University. The University of Pretoria students managed the event seamlessly and participating students from numerous institutions during the Student Conference got a sense of being part of a wider community via their participation, partying and prettifying. Of those from CCMS, Karen, I hardly recognized you, wow; Aarif wore his zoot semi-suit always the epitome of cool; Given wore his ever present jacket and Simone and Eliza were their usual stunningly stylish power dressed selves. Even I had some new stylish clothes on - but nobody noticed. Abraham took three days off from his PhD-related contract research work for the Centre for Development, AIDS, Research and Evaluation (CADRE), and went off to Cape Town for the next leg of the CADRE national project on students and sexual behaviour.
SACOMM President Ruth of course was Presidentially attired - after all we were put up by the conference organizers in the Presidential Suite (with an enclosed veranda, pool, fountain and garden, two large bedrooms, a lounge, two opulent bathrooms, outside showers, and a kitchen). Is this corporate communication at work?
The CCMS students performed magnificently, so much so that Karen was headhunted by more than one institution - I was really relieved to see you, Karen, in your office on the Monday after our return! Eliza got a PhD offer which she could refuse. Simone and Aarif presented similarly well at the student conference, and supported their CCMS colleagues during their respective presentations, once they had worked out the Hotel's bewildering jungle geography and had found a copy of the speakers' programme. Karen even took minutes at the SACOMM AGM asking me for the names of speakers - now that is what I call networking. Mick, the Canadian concerned with Afropessimism - with my unstinting knowledge of Johannesburg streets - managed this time not to get us lost by being misled by the GPS. (I had worked as an urban geographer in the JHB Town Planning Department in the early 1970s). Most significantly, the students learned that the corporate high flyers addressing the delegates at lavish banquets they had sponsored did not always convince.
Many CCMS graduates were at the conference: Jeanne Prinsloo, now Professor at Rhodes, Dr Nirvana Bechan (Cape Peninsula University of Technology), Dr Michelle Tager, Head of Department and CCMS external examiner (Johannesburg); and we eagerly await the third part at next year's conference of Subeshnie Moodley's (UKZN, PMB) trilogy on participatory video and Hindu women. Dr Sonja Narunsky-Laden, a 2005 CCMS post-doctoral fellow (now at Univ of Johannesburg), like the aforementioned, wowed her audiences on the topic of media discourses. Ruth and I were really proud to number such remarkable academics amongst our graduates and colleagues. Prof Bob White SJ, a leading media scholar who was a visiting professor with us in 1994, brought enormous insights to every discussion. Previously at the Gregorian University, Rome, he's now Director of Research at St Augstine's, Tanzania. CCMS will be publishing online his new journal, African Communication Review under the auspices of the UNESCO Chair in Communication. (Got any submissions, anyone?) and again hosting him at CCMS next year. Ruth's riveting Presidential Address which discussed pressing disciplinary issues will be a talking point for many years to come. Damian Garside's (now at North West) entertaining talk on Black Adder closed the conference on a satirical note (with due respects proffered to Zapiro). Damian is the 2009 Conference host. Note the dates now. We're renting a large bus.
For CCMS students the realization that their own studies are internationally competitive, easily benchmarked with the best on offer, was their welcome observation. The interpretations offered by Given and Abraham on student sexual practices came as a real surprise to even veteran researchers whose predominant use of numerical methods fail to identify often bizarre dimensions of risky human behaviour. Hey, John Kunda, next year your presentation will be just as mind-blowing.
The CCMS students were fascinated with approaches to which they had not been previously exposed - a variety of statistical methods, PR, communication management and corporate communication, positivism, PR, and one student presentation on gliding and its (infinitesimal) contribution to South Africa's GNP! They also met some of the seminal names in SA media studies like Prof Pieter Fourie (UNISA) whose new book was launched at the venue. I was hoping that they would meet some other UNISA pundits whose own text book chapters have shaped their studies. Sadly, despite the close proximity of Misty Hills to Pretoria, this was not to be. No matter, the CCMS students were knocked out at meeting Pieter and Clarissa Muir, a dynamic University of Pretoria corp. comm. lecturer who organized the student conference and all the freebies. Ruth remains on as President for another year and was really pleased with the overall quality of the papers, especially by younger academics who are now identifying themselves as the future of the disciplines represented by SACOMM. These folks will need to take SACOMM into the future.
Students were spoiled by the Conference's corporate sponsors: slap up meals and fine wines at the Carnivore, Boma and Summerhouse restaurants; flash drives from Heinemann Publishers; wallets from Nedbank, bags from SACOMM and Van Schaik Publishers, and all sorts of other goodies. They were also touted by Nedbank Private Bank - now that's far-sighted planning. Who says that conferencing can't be fun?
To the future, 2009, Mafikeng campus of the University of North West, is the next venue. We're gonna take even more CCMS students with us next year; we'll dazzle the corporate communication section: Lauren, Kate, Sumaya and Simon, stand by with your respective MA theses on the use of semiotics for the critical analysis of marketing, for marketing, and the for the design of marketing - some of this is social policy action research at work.. As the new digital catchphrase goes, "Shift happens!" Black Adder, here we come .
Next stop, Mafikeng.
Keyan Tomaselli Prod-sumer and occasionally
Professor
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