The use of biblical themes in the debate concerning the xenophobic attacks in South Africa

Verbum et Ecclesia

 
 
Field Value
 
Title The use of biblical themes in the debate concerning the xenophobic attacks in South Africa
 
Creator Dube, Zorodzai
 
Subject cultural studies, Bible Key words: Xenophobia, Social Media, Images, Morality, Creation
Description The study draws from the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, Daniel Trotter and Christian Fuchs, Zizi Papacharissis, Yochai Benkler and Christian Fuchs to investigate the use of social media as a platform to express ideas against xenophobic-related attacks in South Africa (April 2015–May 2015). The data was collected from twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Most views came from the Facebook platform called ‘Stop xenophobia’. Using ATLAS.ti, software for qualitative research, the data was coded into interpretive variables or categories. The results show that themes such as hospitality, morality, creation and ethics received highest frequency as reasons to condemn xenophobia. The research further reveals that the social media data is much candid in comparison to state controlled media, where views and ideas were censored to protect the economic and public image of the country. Unlike the controlled government outlets which focus on the possible correlation between xenophobic attacks to economic outlook, the social media focuses on moral and ethical issues – issues that define our collective as human beings and tackles xenophobia from the perspective of ethics and shared human values.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This study is interdisciplinary in nature due to the use of theories in media studies and social sciences to investigate the use of biblical themes in the fight against xenophobia.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor University of pretoria
Date 2015-11-04
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Survey, textual
Format text/html application/octet-stream text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/ve.v36i1.1464
 
Source Verbum et Ecclesia; Vol 36, No 1 (2015); 6 pages 2074-7705 1609-9982
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/1464/2626 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/1464/2627 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/1464/2628 https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/1464/2589
 
Coverage Africa — bible, politics
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Zorodzai Dube https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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