Air quality in the Emalahleni area was found to be non-compliant with the South African national ambient air quality standards in terms of the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act (39 of 2004). This study aimed to explore the communication strategy that the Emalahleni Local Municipality (ELM) is using to raise community awareness of air quality improvement. A mixed-methods approach was followed; interviews were conducted with officials in the ELM and, in the second phase, questionnaires were administered to community members. The results from the qualitative data were confirmed using those obtained by the quantitative method. The survey questionnaires investigated the communication strategies and channels used to raise awareness of air quality improvement. An analysis of the responses showed a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93, indicating acceptable internal consistency and reliability of the variables measured. The results showed that ELM community members are aware of the air quality improvement programme, how to maintain air quality, and the channels used to disseminate information. Although the dissemination of information on air quality is successful in the ELM, the approaches used were not strategic enough to encourage residents to improve air quality. This article suggests that an evaluation of the strategic communication interventions is required to properly ascertain the communication intervention outcomes.

This article offers a thematic review of criticism directed at high-level public discourse surrounding the South African Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) agenda. While the South African adoption of the World Economic Forum's 4IR strategy for economic growth and skills development has been met with widespread enthusiasm, it has also attracted considerable criticism. This article thus seeks to offer insight into the debate surrounding the legitimacy and contextual propriety of the South African 4IR agenda. Insofar as the local criticism directed at the 4IR agenda reflects international criticism of the concept, the first part of this article draws on global critiques to explore objections raised against the 4IR's constitutive legitimacy. The second part of the article identifies critical themes surrounding more locally specific rejections of the 4IR agenda, such as it being an imported and contextually inappropriate framework for addressing local problems. Finally, I analyse an editorial cartoon that captures the various grounds on which the South African 4IR agenda is commonly critiqued. While this article provides insight into a particular public policy controversy, it also elucidates some general oppositional values as expressed by critics in their assessment of development rhetoric.

The use of still and motion pictures in reporting on a crisis actually frames the news in particular ways for better understanding. The current study of visual framing of the Cameroon Anglophone crisis in 2016 revealed that the press paid considerable attention to the crisis by making use of images. Of the 216 articles identified in the study, 174 images were used to bring out the conflict and thereby create different perspectives of understanding through frames. The study identified two general frame systems in the coverage of the crisis, namely, the pro- and anti-government perspectives. A further 11 salient frames were identified under these two general frame systems. A comparative analysis of private and public press use of visual frames revealed that the private press made more use of photographs to bring out salient issues in the crisis, such as conflict, lives lost, as well as political actors. The public press on its part paid minimal attention to the crisis and made use of photographs depicting peace/unity, government appeasement, and return to normalcy.

Work-life balance (WLB) issues are taking centre stage in the work and family policies in Kenya. This is due to the diversity of the current workforce that includes high proportions of working women. This article reports on a study that sought to find out how the print media frames the definitions and causes of, and solutions to, WLB issues in Kenya. The study found that the media frames WLB as a middle-and upper-class families’ women’s issue. Thus, WLB is depicted as unattainable and women’s work is framed as their choice made for selfish ambition. This framing places working mothers at a disadvantage. Women are perceived as primary caregivers with roles that cannot be delegated. There is also less support from their spouses and employers and more reliance on domestic workers. The study found the following solutions to WLB challenges: (1) reframe women’s role to be inclusive of work; (2) include nurturing roles to expand the role of fathers and husbands; (3) improve women’s relationship with their domestic workers; (4) encourage women to pace life accordingly; and (5) advise women to plan and have better time management. Policy implications are also discussed in detail in the article.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) incidence rates remain disproportionately high among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), who are five to seven times more likely to contract HIV than their male peers. Following the 2015 World Health Organization (WHO) Guideline on When to Start Antiretroviral Therapy and on Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV, the South African Department of Health (DoH) released the National Policy on HIV PrEP and Test and Treat (T&T) in June 2016. At the time of writing, several demonstration projects were underway to assess the feasibility of oral PrEP for AGYW in South Africa, with extensive access for sex workers and limited access for AGYW. It is within this context that the article explores the current perceptions of oral PrEP utilising the data from two previous studies conducted in three high HIV burden districts in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa. Through an analysis of the current perceptions of oral PrEP, the article prioritises the cultural communication imperative to promote inclusivity and acceptability of biomedical innovations. The article argues that communication about oral PrEP is embedded in cultural discourses that must be discussed, critiqued and incorporated into a new framework for combination HIV prevention.

This article reports on a study that attempted to understand news and information inequalities by mapping the distribution of broadcast media outlets, the spread of accredited journalists, and the presence of established news bureaus in the eight regions in Kenya. Further, the study sought to determine the ownership of the broadcast media in Kenya and the trends in ownership and audience reach within the context of commercial interest and public interest dialectics. The study was anchored on the theory of the political economy of the media which looks at power relations that influence the production, distribution and consumption of resources from a critical tradition. Based on the analysis of documents, audience research data, and literature on media representation and socioeconomic and political development, the study revealed that Nairobi County is the news and information hub. It has the most journalists, radio stations and news bureaus, whereas far-flung counties exist in news and information deserts. Central region residents were found to consume the least percentage of the non-local language radio stations as they prefer local language or vernacular radio stations Western, South Nyanza (Nyamira and Kisii) and North Western regions are unique in that their consumption of radio with a national target audience is fairly high when the Average Daily Radio Reach (ADRR) of the top five radio stations is considered. Ownership of the radio market is in the hands of five media organisations that share 43.70% of the ADRR. The establishment, audience reach and ownership trends of these media organisations coupled with the spread of journalists and news bureaus revealed news and information inequalities. The audience reach by broadcast media outlets, even in areas where vernacular radio stations provide a rich diet of media content, seems to be more interested in ownership for profit maximisation at the expense of public interest.

This article assesses the multiple factors which are barriers to media freedom in South Africa. These include crises of financial sustainability of the media sector which have recently been compounded by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; widespread job losses in journalism; and harassment and physical violence against journalists from political representatives, security services, the judiciary, citizens and from within the media sector itself. Notwithstanding the contested liberal normative role of the press, the assessment of “media freedom inhibitors” offered here is theoretically premised on the role of the media in a democracy, and the importance of media freedom to the political, economic and social welfare of a democratic society. Methodologically, the data was collated from the State of the Newsroom (SoN) publications, and via the South African National Editors’’ Forum (SANEF) archive, which revealed that the intensity of attacks on journalists in South Africa is escalating, and from different quarters. Thus, the article argues for broadening the scope of research and advocacy efforts, beyond government-proposed legislation, to the multiple other obstacles to media freedom in the country.

The emergence of social media makes many variations in political communication. The rise in the use of Facebook sosial networks among modern society especially among young people makes Facebook as popular sosial network today. Facebook's popularity cannot be separated from its use as a sosial network that uses photos, videos as a communication tool, thus allowing users to create their personal branding to the publik through Facebook social media. Facebook also allows users to do personal branding politics through uploads and platforms that they upload. One of the politicians who use Facebook as a personal branding media is Thoriqul Haq. Through informative and educative and persuasive approaches and methods. To build the expected political image, Thoriqul Haq has delivered repeated messages on social media with an informative and educative, and persuasive approach. Broadly speaking, the political communication strategy carried out is optimal, especially in building political image as a new player in the political arena.

How the media are organised and funded has implications on who gets to speak and the stories that are told or silenced. The critical political economy of the media approach allows an understanding of the ideologies and power structures that influence media operations, ownership, and funding. Although the critical political economy of the media remains central in understanding these issues, the approach needs to be decolonised to address the dynamics of media power from the perspective of the global south. In this paper, we explore what the theoretical contributions of decoloniality can make to the project of rethinking political economy of the media. We argue that the critical political economy approach, whose core vocabulary is Marxist, contains inherent limitations in understanding conditions of media-state relations in Africa. Decolonial thought and its recent engagement with Marxism has produced new thinking and fresh ways of reflecting the relationship between Western capitalism and modernity. We contend that this approach allows us to foreground issues of modernity, coloniality, and race and their impact on contemporary media systems in Africa.