'And what are you reading, miss? Oh, it is only a website': The new media and the pedagogical possibilities of digital culture as a South African 'teen guide' to HIV/AIDS and STDs

Convergence

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 80-92

  Mitchell, Claudia ^a   Reid Walsh, Jacqueline ^b   Pithouse, Kathleen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU NATAL   (South Africa)

^b University of KwaZulu Natal ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049164606     PISSN: 13548565     EISSN: 17487382     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/135485650401000106     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Justine Cassell, 'Storytelling as a Nexus of Change in the Relationship Between Gender and Technology: A Feminist Approach to Software Design', in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 298-326;
2. Heather Gilmore, 'What Girls Want: The Intersections of Leisure and Power in Female Computer Game Play', in Kids' Media Culture, ed. Marsha Kinder (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 263-292;
3. Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992);
4. Myron Orleans and Margaret C. Laney, 'Children's Computer use in the Home: Isolation or Socialization', Social Science Computer Review, 18, no. 1 (2000), pp. 56-72;
5. Sherry Turkle, 'Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and Voices Within the Computer Culture', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16, no 1 (1990), pp. 128-157;
6. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).
7. David Buckingham, 'After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up' in The Age of the Electronic Media (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000);
8. Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: from Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991);
9. Helen Nixon, 'Fun and Games are Serious Business', in Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia, ed. Julian Sefton-Green (London: UCL Press, 1998), pp. 21-42;
10. Karen Orr Vered, 'Blue Group Boys Play Incredible Machine, Girls Play Hopscotch: Social Discourse and Gendered Play at the Computer', in Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia, ed. Julian Sefton-Green (London: UCL Press, 1998), pp. 43-61;
11. Julian Sefton-Green and David Buckingham, 'Digital Visions: Children's 'Creative Uses' of Multimedia Technologies', in Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia, ed. Julian Sefton-Green (London: UCL Press, 1998), pp. 62-83.
12. Cecilia, M. Gorriz and Claudia Medina, 'Engaging Girls with Computers through Software Games', Communications of the ACM, 43, no. 1 (2000), pp. 42-49.
13. David Buckingham, The Making of Citizens: Young People, News and Politics (London: Routledge, 2000).
14. David Archard, Children; Rights and Childhood (London: Routledge, 1993).
15. Women in South Africa are more likely to contract HIV than men because they are biologically, economically and socially more vulnerable to infection and to unprotected or non-consensual sex (see Rachel Jewkes, 'Preventing Sexual Violence: a Rights-Based Approach', The Lancet, 360, no. 5, (2002), pp. 1092-1093
16. and Shannon Walsh, Claudia Mitchell and Ann Smith, 'The Soft Cover Project: Youth Participation in HIV/AIDS Interventions', Agenda, 53 (2002), pp. 106-112).
17. Research indicates that South African girls between 5 and 14 years of age are eight times more likely to be infected through sexual abuse than their male peers - see Chris Desmond and Jeff Gow, 'The Current and Future Impact of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic on South Africa's Children' in AIDS, Public Policy and Child Well-Being, ed. Giovanni Andrea Cornia (Florence: UNICEF, 2002), pp. 1-47. www.und.ac.za/und/heard/papers/chapter6.pdf (23 April 2003).
18. Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Nikki Kumar and Claudia Mitchell, 'A Teen Girl's Guide to STD's and AIDS', Paper Presented at the Popular Culture Association Annual Conference (Toronto, Sheraton Centre, 13-15 March 2002).
19. Work on magazines aimed at the young teen market (like the work on women's magazines more generally) has been extensive. This research has ranged from Angela McRobbie's work in the 1980s and early 1990s where she offered a semiotic reading on the codes of romance found in these magazines, to Dawn Currie's more straightforward sociological analysis of these texts and their readers. In our previous research we have found teen girls' magazines as rich sites for exploring such phenomenon as girls' bedroom culture - Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Researching Children's Popular Culture: Cultural Spaces of Childhood (London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis, 2002), 'back to school'
20. - Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, That's Funny, You Don't Look like a Teacher: Interrogating Images of Identity in Popular Culture (London and New York: Falmer Press, 1995), the prom
21. - Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, Dress Fitting. Video documentary produced by the Image and Identity Research Collective lang1033 www.iirc.mcgill.ca, Canada, 2000, and as catalogues of desire
22. - Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, 'Mail-Order Memory Work: Towards a Methodology of Uncovering the Experiences of Covering Over', Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies, 20, no. 1 (1998), pp. 57-75.
23. Globe and Mail, 'Editorial: A Teen's Guide to STDs', Globe and Mail, Monday 20 August 2001.
24. Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber 'Girls and Subcultures', in Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackie to Just Seventeen, Angela McRobbie (Cambridge, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1991), pp. 1-15;
25. Vivienne Griffiths, Adolescent Girls and their Friends: A Feminist Ethnography (Aldershot: Averbury, 1995).
26. Claire Dwyer, 'Contested Identities: Challenging Dominant Representations of Young British Muslim Women', in Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Culture, eds. Tracey Skelton and Gill Valentine (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 50-65.
27. On the KFF website lang1033 www.kff.org/about/index.cfm, the foundation's work is described in this way: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation is an independent philanthropy focusing on the major health care issues facing the nation. The Foundation is an independent voice and source of facts and analysis for policymakers, the media, the health care community, and the general public. KFF is an operating Foundation that develops and runs its own research and communications programs, often in partnership with outside organisations. Through our policy research and communications programs, and through contracts with outside partners, we work to provide reliable information in a health system in which the issues are increasingly complex and the nation faces difficult challenges and choices. Our work is focused in three main areas: Health Policy, Media and Public Education, and Health and Development in South Africa.
28. See also Richard Delate, 'The Struggle for Meaning: A Semiotic Analysis of Interpretations of the loveLife His and Hers Billboard Campaign', November 2001. www.comminit.com/stlovelife/sld-4389.html (16 September 2003) for an extensive consideration of the controversy surrounding loveLife.
29. Claudia Mitchell and Ann Smith, 'Changing the Picture: Youth, Gender and HIV/AIDS Prevention Campaigns in South Africa', Canadian Women's Studies Journal, 21, no. 2 (2001), pp. 56-62;
30. Claudia Mitchell and Ann Smith, 'Sick of AIDS: Literacy and the Meaning of Life for South African Youth', Sexuality, Culture and Health, in press.
31. Human Rights Watch Report, 'Scared at School: Sexual Violence against Girls in South African Schools', 2001. www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/S/SAFRICA/ SAFWOM1201.PDF 1 (6 September 2003).
32. Catherine Campbell, 'Letting them Die' Why HIV/AIDS Intervention Programmes Fail (Cape Town: Double Storey, 2003).
33. loveLife, 'loveLife 2002: Report on Activities and Progress', 2002, p. 5. www.lovelife.org.za/corporate/research/loveLife_2002_report.pdf (8 September 2003).
34. loveLife Online, 'Research & Statistics'. www.lovelife.org.za/ corporate/index.html, 9 September 2003.
35. Shafika Isaacs, 'IT's Hot for Girls!: ICTs as an Instrument in Advancing Girls' and Women's Capabilities in School Education in Africa', 2002. www.un.org/women-watch/daw/egm/ict2002/reports/Paper%20by%20Isaaks2.PDF (16 September 2003).
36. Herman Wasserman, 'Dial-up Identity: South African Languages in Cyberspace', in Shifting Selves: Post Apartheid Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity, eds. Herman Wasserman and Sean Jacobs (Cape Town: Kwela, 2003), pp. 79-96.
37. Jackie Kirk, and Stephanie Garrow, 'Girls in Policy: Challenges for the Education Sector', Agenda, 56 (2003), pp. 4-15.
38. Here we are referring to the newly formed South African Media Studies Initiative Task Team that includes SABC, the Department of Education but also private sector interests. See www.gcis.gov.za/docs/portcom/govreport.pdf.
39. Susannah Stern, 'Virtually Speaking: Girls' Self-disclosure on the WWW', Women's Studies in Communication, 25, no. 2 (2002), pp. 224-253;
40. Rebekah Willett, 'Constructing the Digital Tween: Market Discourse and Girl's Interests', in Seven Going on Seventeen: Tween Culture within Girlhood Studies, eds. Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh (New York: Peter Lang and Associates, forthcoming).
41. Sandra Walsh and Claudia Mitchell, 'Artfully Engaged: Youth, Gender and AIDS Activism', in Provoked by Art: Theorizing Arts-informed Inquiry, eds. Ardra L. Cole, Lorri Neilsen, J. Gary Knowles and Teresa Luciani (Backalong Books, 2004), pp. 191-202.
42. Theorists and researchers of youth popular culture have studied how girls and young women read fashion magazines. Angela McRobbie - Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackie to Just Seventeen (Cambridge, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1991)
43. For more information on youth-friendly clinics in South Africa, see loveLife, 'loveLife 2002: Report on Activities and Progress', 2002. www.lovelife.org.za/corporate/research/loveLife_2002_report.pdf (8 September 2003);