Centre for Communication, Media and Society

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Remembering the decolonial nation: the M.T. Steyn statue as a site of struggle.
(2021) Pretorius, Johannes Jacobus.; Teer-Tomaselli, Ruth Elizabeth.
The study tracks the meaning/s of the M.T. Steyn statue, that stood on the grounds of the University of the Free State main campus, through two contextual periods: against a fledgling Afrikaner nationalism at the time of the statue’s unveiling in 1929, and against the cries for transformation and decolonisation associated with the #RhodesMustFall movement that swept through South African campuses in 2015 and which eventually led to the relocation of the statue. This is done to understand how a cultural artefact embodies different meanings over a range of social and historical contexts, which, when read against these contexts can express and illuminate them in new and insightful ways. In this way the meaning/s of the statue is explored as a key in developing an understanding of how ‘heritage’ was and is constructed in the different periods in question. The research utilised theories of representation (Hall, 1997) combined with the notion of articulation, as used by Stuart Hall (1996), that imagines discourse as made up of unities consisting of ‘articulated’ elements that are both ‘structured’ and spoken’ at the same time. This is used to describe ‘heritage’ as consisting of articulated notions of culture, identity and the past that transform over time and which, at different times, present different conceptualisation of the nation, who belongs, what culture is worth preserving, and what past constitute the past of the ‘nation’ i.e. that constitute the mirror in which a nation or a group can recognise itself. The study found that the statue of M.T. Steyn articulated an Afrikaner nationalist discourse, culturally expressed as a drive towards endogeneity and ‘ownness’, at the time of its unveiling in 1929, and the antithesis of what the #RhodesMustFall movement articulated as its own modus operandi in 2015, namely decoloniality. Furthermore, a relationship between what both these drives for cultural transformation embodied became evident when ‘reading’ the two periods together in an attempt to gain insight into a pre-dominant construction of heritage in contemporary South Africa. This ‘reading’ suggested that an opportunity to re-articulate the statue in a productive and affirmative way, that could resonate with a broader, outward looking, decolonial struggle many could identify with, got lost with its relocation. The contribution of the research to the study of ‘heritage’ in South Africa was using the theory of articulation to understand the landscape ‘holistically’, i.e., that included both a discursive and semiotic approach. Furthermore, by exploring the ‘meaning’ of a particular statue that had not been extensively researched in any academic text, hopefully provided new insight into the contemporary heritage landscape, embodied in a particular cultural artefact.
Social media activism : an analysis of the #RhodesMustFall movement on Twitter (9 March 2015–9 April 2015).
(2018) Mokonehatse, Poloko.; Steenfeldt-Kristensen, Sarah Elizabeth.
Social media platforms have increasingly become associated with social movements globally. The platforms enables users to easily produce content, share information and interact with each other. Social media platforms have also provided users with a space that allows them to discuss common issues they would otherwise be unable to discuss due to constraints such as distance. This also provides users with the opportunity to discuss and engage in marginalized issues from a grassroot perspective. As several political parties also utilise social media platforms, users can directly interact with them about matters of concern. With the rise of social media activism, extensive research has been conducted from the global north with cases such as the Arab springs and the Egyptian uprising. In these examples, both protests had roots in issues of social justice and used Twitter to discuss these issues as well as the occurrences that happened during the protests. While the above examples are from the global north, in 2015 South Africa experienced two considerable movements that were also largely influenced by Twitter. #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall initiated conversations that were key to national social justice issues. On one hand, #RhodesMustFall was based on the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes which led to a national conversation about the symbols of oppression around the country and later on discussions about race, transformation and memory. It has become apparent that a strong link has been established between social media platforms and various social movements. Interestingly, in the case of #RhodesMustFall, most of the research has focused on the issues of statues and symbols. This research aims to explore the relationship between social movement and networked public spheres. It will also focus on the aspects of social media that enable users to participate in social movements. The data will be collected under the #RhodesMustFall hashtag on Twitter during the period of 9 March 2015 – 9 April 2015. Although, a great amount of research on social media activism has used qualitative methods to understand the high volume of activities that happen online during the protests, this research will be using qualitative methods. In order to gain a deep understanding of the issues discussed on Twitter, the research will utilise the methods of critical discourse analysis to analyse the tweets and a semiotic analysis to analyse the digital images and memes that were posted online during the protests.

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