Document details

Investigating Communication, Health and Development: 10 Years of Research in the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS)

Auckland Park: Jacana Media;University of KwaZulu-Natal, Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS) (2012), xxx, 480 pp.

ISBN 978-1-4314-0730-9

"This book traces some of the key research conducted over a ten-year period by honours, MA and PhD students who have attended the CCMS Entertainment Education / communication for participatory development course from its inception in 2002, until 2011. There has been a marked shift in the paradigm guiding this post-graduate course, which is explored in the introductory chapter. Innovative methodologies and indigenised theories are brought to bear through each research project, which include conceptually integrated, paradigm-specific graduate work. It keeps abreast of current debates, contributes to international conferences and peer-reviewed publications and assists CCMS in retaining a comparative world benchmark. Much of the work included in this collection reflects the Freireian derived experientialist pedagogy of CCMS, where students take responsibility for developing their own research directions within specific research programmes. There is a strong emphasis in this collected work on media, social justice, and human rights issues, especially relating to historically disadvantaged communities. The book includes two primary research foci: development communication and public health communication. Development communication invokes new ways of harnessing media and localised cultural frames in promoting development strategies, health promotion, private-public partnerships and community development. Public health communication in the context of this work involves applying the emergent field of Education Entertainment via a framework of communication for social and behavioural change. In order to provide a wide range of examples of research approaches and topics, we have included edited, shortened versions of 35 research papers." (Pages xix-xx)