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A Decolonial Analysis of the Cyberbullying of South African Women Journalists

In: Decolonising Journalism Education in South Africa: Critical Perspectives
Ylva Rodny-Gumede; Colin Chasi; Zubeida Jaffer; Mvuso Ponono (eds.)
London; New York: Routledge (2023), pp. 135-148

Institution of author: University of South Africa

"At the heart of decolonial theory is the love for woman, particularly black woman, as the most oppressed of political categories in the old colonial structures of race, class and gender hierarchy. This chapter uses decolonial theory, specifically Chela Sandoval’s concept of ‘decolonial love’ as a political technology, to discuss the cyberbullying of women journalists in South Africa. It blends Sandoval’s decolonial love theory with Frantz Fanon’s concept of ‘damnes’ or ‘wretched of the earth,’ to analyse stories of cyber-bullying, sexism and threats of sexual violence against women journalists using the research published in Glass Ceilings: Women in South African Media Houses 2018. This chapter argues that it is a revolutionary oppositional consciousness that operates when women, particularly black women, continue in the performativity of their craft to write and to speak out in the media, despite the subjection and misogyny they face." (Abstract)