Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts

Thursday, August 28, 2014

How digital journalism changes story telling

Picture courtesy: www.fundintranslation.berkely.edu
On Tuesday 26 August, 2014, Stats SA released the GDP figures of the second quarter of 2014. The figures showed that South Africa has managed to stave off a recession by posting a modest growth of 0.6 per cent.

The following multi media platforms may be used to tell the story.




Picture Courtesy: www.theundercovercircuit.com
Social Media Platforms:
  • Google Plus Hangout: G+ Hangout is a very useful tool to reach out to the readers. If I was reporting on the GDP news, I would have held G+ hangout with my readers and my newspaper's business/ economic editor and invited industry experts one or two days before the publication of the news. This would have generated interest among readers about the expected figures. In the environment of 24X7 news, it is extremely important to create a 'buzz' around the news one is reporting on so that one can draw the readers in.
  • Twitter: News story, sensational or otherwise is now mostly 'broken' on Twitter. I would have posted the news on Twitter as soon as Stats SA made the figures public. I would have also twitted on subsequent tweets the important numbers and facts such as the key contributors to the growth and the key sectors which pulled the growth down. Twitter serves as the most useful platform for making the news reach a large audience through the means of a "#". In addition to my followers getting my tweets, there is a high chance of the tweets being re-tweeted or being marked as favorite. 
  • News Organizations's Website: After Twitter, the second most important place to report the news is of course, the news organization's website. This platform would give the journalist an opportunity to report on the story behind the numbers and analyse the 'how' and the 'why'. It also gives the reader a chance to disseminate the news on various other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and on Google Plus and of course  to be emailed to the reader's friends. The reader also gets an opportunity to comment on the news item. 
  • News Organisation's Blog: Blogging is a very useful platform to get the reader's attention and engage him/her with the news story. For the particular GDP story, an economist or an industry spokesperson could be invited to write on the blog. Blogs are usually for serious readers who are interested in analyzing the news. Therefore it would be better if an economic analyst or the Treasury spokesperson can write the blog about the consequences of such a slow growth rate and how it would affect the economy. Also a mining industry expert could be invited to write upon what impact does the negative growth rate have on the industry  
  • Reddit.com: Reddit.com is an amazing site to put the news across. Of course, a news like SA's GDP growth would not necessarily interest readers, because a lot of readers might not be from South Africa. To make the news more interesting and relevant to readers, I would link news articles on a particular sector such as mining and show how mining in SA reflected a negative growth rate. I could also post a series of articles from my organization's website about the trends of the past quarter's GDP figures and analyse what it means for the economy.
  • Storify: Storify lets the user create stories or timelines using social media platforms. I would Storify the above news with the various tweets that my business/economic editors post and also take relevant conversation occurring on media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on the topic and Storify them.
  • LinkedIn: Though this platforms is mostly used to connect professionally, news like the GDP growth should definitely be on LinkedIn. I can share the link from my website onto LinkedIn and through LinkedIn to the community pages that LinkedIn hosts. LinkedIn is frequented by more serious visitors who are willing to read on subjects such as GDP growth rate.
  • Web Polls: Though not a social media platform, polls are a very good tool to gain an insight into the readers. For this story, I could have a poll asking the readers to express their view on a certain sector of the economy or on the growth figures. Online polling sites such SurveyMonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/?ut_source=header_) to create questions and take surveys on the website or blog. Readers will have added initiative to read the article and respond.

Picture courtesy: www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Data Journalism and Visual Graphics:

Economic/ business news can be best told through visual graphics and through the use of pie charts and bar diagrams. Visual representation should be used to simplify the numbers and figures that many readers find daunting and most of them, therefore avoid news such as the one above. In an article from the Columbia Journalism School, the author points to Washington Post's successful digital initiative "Wonkblog" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/) as an example to visually represent numbers.
I would use an interactive visualization and exploration tool like Gephi to put across some of the important figures such as the positive growth by some sectors and why did these sectors grow. I could actually represent the GDP growth figures completely through graphics and share it on my website. It would help draw readers in and help them easily understand about the state of the economy.

Multimedia: 

The use of multimedia such as videos would not really help this story. A way of incorporating videos in the story would be to focus on particular sectors of the economy to show how and why it fared, as it did. Or one can interview industry experts or economists to show how the figures would impact the economy. I feel, the Google hangout mentioned above would actually help the reader more than just videos of comments from industry experts or economists.




Tuesday, December 10, 2013

What Mandela's struggle meant to me...

Nine months ago, I was a stranger to this land, and as a stranger does so often, I only knew Nelson Mandela as a great leader and as a great Gandhian who fought against an unjust system and won after a long, hard struggle... How long or how hard the struggle was, eluded me... now nine months living in South Africa and having studied the history of the land, having talked to many of the people who inhabit this land and after visits to certain historical landmarks, I can safely say, that Nelson Mandela was not only a leader of South Africa but of all the people who seem to have lost hope.

Last Thursday night when he breathed his last, South Africa not only lost it's father, but the world lost a great humanist. It's only fitting that his Memorial Service is being held today, the 10th of December, which also happens to be the International Human Rights Day... Nothing could have fitted the occasion more than  the ode being paid to this great leader.

Since the passing away of Madiba (as he was affectionately called here) the South African weather also seem to be mournful. The cheerful and sunny weather has given way to a rainy, gloomy and cloudy weather, though according to the local lore, it is a good sign. It means that God is now ready to accept a great soul into his kingdom and the rains are his symbol for the said event.

Last Friday, when most South Africans woke up to the historic news of Madiba's passing away, I and my husband Rahul went to have coffee at a nearby coffee house... all around me were the images of the great man and news were flying thick and fast about the days to come... Beside us, there were these two white gentlemen who were equally absorbed in the news when it suddenly occurred to me that if it was not for Nelson Mandela, I and Rahul would have never been able to sit so freely beside those two white men... we would have our separate enclosure and maybe we would have been sitting outside in the rain...

What Mandela taught us most importantly is that before any other considerations, we are all human beings, not a whole lot of Indians of my generation will understand it but if I told you that even nineteen years ago, I would be put be put in Jail for writing this blogpost, just because of my color, you would understand, what I mean, when I say, Nelson Mandela fought not only for South Africa, but also for you and me...and for the hope we all have...


Friday, September 27, 2013

My Life as a "wanderlust" : Sophie and Me... The unique relationship between me and my South African domestic...

Sophie is my domestic helper... no, I think that definition is a very narrow one...

Sophie, for me, is a doorway to know the culture of the land, I now inhabit... she is my mirror to the larger society that I am a part of, and yet I am quite aloof from it all... being an expat from the United States and an Indian national, we largely have American and Indian friends, who are all expatriates. We stay in gated communities, quite away from the humdrum, the joviality and the color of an ordinary South African life. We are fortunate enough to have a car at our disposal, wherever we wish to go... I have no idea how the "bucckies" (taxis, here in South Africa) are and I am quite unfortunately unaware of the problems that are faced by ordinary South Africans, in their ways of life... because as I said before, I live in a shell like existence...

That is the prime reason, why Sophie is important to me...

Not only she helps me keep my house clean, she also serves as a window to the larger, ordinary South African life...

Will Julius Malema make it to the elections next year..??? Is Robert Mugabe really as bad as portrayed in the world media?  How were the days for her, as a "black domestic" working in a predominantly "white neighborhood" in the days of apartheid? Do the tribes here, really keep Cheetahs as pets and how does one conform to the dual identity of being a Christian and a proud Tribal landlord...

These are some of the questions that Sophie unknowingly answers in our everyday conversations...

The first day, she came to work in my house, the second thing she said, after a big smile and a "thank you" ; is that she has never worked for "this color before", touching my arm to show that she has never worked with an Indian native before... Honestly, I was surprised and to tell the least I was shocked... I had never given any thought to my skin color before, at least not in the sense that Sophie implied, and then I realized that the skin color issue goes so deep in their psyche, that she just can't help but point it out...

I justified my skin color and the country of my origin by stating the one name, I thought she might be familiar with, Mahatma Gandhi... I asked her, "do you know of Mahatma Gandhi? He lived here in South Africa. I am from his country... same color, and same country, you see"... she responded with a huge smile, "yes Gandhi, I know Gandhi", "good man, very good man".... he fought for us...." I really wished some of our Indian Leaders could hear it... especially now, when the only day we remember the great man, is on his birth anniversary, and that too because it's a public holiday.

It's now been almost five months since I have known Sophie, and it seems to me, that she, through her stories, open up an incredible world  for me... it's a world inhabited by proud African chieftains, of the glorious wars the kings fought for cattle, the days of oppression, of Apartheid, of an entire nation suppressed by a minority government and of 1994, when Sophie who was 38 years of age and her mother 80 years old, went to vote for the first time in their lives...

Sophie belongs to the Ndebele (pronounced "debele", the N is silent) tribe who live mostly in the province of Mpumalanga (the M is silent)... her family is related to a tribal warlord who at one time had accumulated millions of cattle and were trading partners with the Boer settlers when they first came in... her mother still lives in a small village in a wattle and daub house and her only brother, was shot by the Apartheid Police when he was 22 and was working as an electrician for a white businessman, his crime, he was out in the "white neighborhood"  without his "identity pass" at 7 pm in the evening... he was the only bread earner in the family of four... after which Sophie took on the responsibility of the household and set off to eMahlaleni (Witbank), an industrial town some seven kilometers away from her village to find work as a domestic...

She has one daughter, Precious, who studies Chemical Engineering in Stellenbosch University near Cape Town. When Precious was small, she could not get admitted to a school near Sophie's then employer's home, because it was reserved for "white kids only" , her then employer, a White doctor called Jaco, (who still live in Silver Lakes, one of the biggest gated Estates in Pretoria East) introduced Precious as their own adopted daughter in order to secure admission for her in a school a short distance away where his children also studied. He and his wife, used to take Precious with their own girls to the school in their car... something that was unthinkable in the Apartheid ridden South Africa...

When she speaks of Nelson Mandela, her eyes fill with tears... Mandela, also known as 'Madiba' here, is the father of the nation. What Mandela and the African National Congress did for the majority of Black South Africans can be gauged from Sophie's life. Sophie belongs to the lowermost strata of the society, a strata long oppressed first by the white minority and then by the elite black minority. Sophie's daughter who is hopefully going to enter the growing middle class is her only hope of having a better life, one in which she hopes, to no longer work as a domestic helper.

As I grow more familiar with her, her life seems so richly filled with experiences, that my own struggles seem puny. She looks much more than 57 years of age, a face wrinkled and creased by experiences, age and struggles. As a woman, Sophie has had to struggle on many levels, a single mother trying to eke a living for herself and her daughter, a black domestic worker, working for white employers, a dutiful daughter whom circumstances forced to become the sole breadwinner for the family, a devoted Christian, and an ANC Card holding member, who with millions of her countrymen are engaged in a long battle to elevate and gain an equal standing in the land of their birth.

The one thing that never ceases to amaze me about Sophie, is this woman, whom life has handed out probably the harshest of the terms, never ever blames life for her destiny. She always has a smile on her face when I open the door in the mornings that she comes to my house. She is always grateful to god, that he has given her a life and enough to eat to maintain her strength so that she can work and earn her livelihood...

Nowadays, very often, a small quote by Gandhi (yes, again, back to him)... comes to my mind, it goes something like this, "when you are in a difficulty, when your ability to decide is being challenged and you are confused about the path to take, think about the most poorest and the most courageous man or woman you have ever met, and think, how the path(s) you are about to take, will effect him or her. You'll see it becomes easy and something that seem complicated, resolves smoothly".

Before this I could not think of any one till I met Sophie...

Friday, July 19, 2013

My Life as a Wanderlust... Atheism, Racism, Gandhi and a Writer's Block...!!

I have been suffering from an overload of ideas... ok I do know the reason for this though... I have been reading and commenting on too many blogs, too many people are giving me ideas and the true Gemini girl that I am all these ideas are inter playing in my little grey cells... I really do not know which ones to concentrate upon and which ones to leave out.

Probably this in itself is a kind of Writer's Block. I know the Wikipedia definition of a Writer's Block and that definition mostly blames anxiety and chaos as the top reasons for having writer's block... but what if the writer has too many ideas clogging her grey cells ?

What then ?

Anxiety or Chaos...?

Take for instance, the other day, I came across a webpage on Atheism, and there was this post, a young boy of sixteen had written... the post noted, how, he was an Atheist and how his mother and sister found this particular trait of his to be an oddity and as such a shameful behavior. That post set me thinking... Of course I did my best to console the child and told him that it's best not to discuss ideas that others find appalling, even if, as a human being, you are entitled to have your own ideas... to get his thoughts on paper, to write them down... that had always helped me, and even today, when I am faced with a terrible, situation which is confounding me, like this one, I find it best to put them in words...

But the post set me thinking... Am I an Atheist ? Does everyone of us have an Atheist in themselves or are we so devoted to our faith that we cannot even grasp the idea of a Godless world ? And then it came to me...

Probably each of us carry an Atheist and a Believer in us, yes the same two contradicting forces find themselves manifested in the same person. Human beings have developed too much, intellectually and socially, to blindly follow any notion that's forced into them. If we were all devoted, blind, believers of our respective faiths, then science would not have made the advancement that it has made since the invention of fire.

And if we were so strictly Atheist, religion would not have been an integral part of our lives, hell, sometimes it even rules us... So the incredible truth is Human beings are both believers and atheists at the same time. We are a clever specie... of course the way we have "evolved" is a testament to the fact, we use faith when it suits us and reason, when it does so.

So think about it, are you strictly an atheist or strictly a believer ?

 In my case I think I am agnostic... I believe in God, but my "god" is made up of all the good deeds and principles, mainly, which I sometimes strive to follow, and sometimes I fail to... Truth, Generosity, Trust, Help, Belief and my parents, these are my GOD... and I do not, never have believed, that there is some big great man or woman sitting up in heaven beyond the skies who's looking after us...

But anyhow, this post was about my Writer's Block, not about Atheism...

The second idea that entered my head and troubled my grey cells was one of Racism... actually while growing up in India, I never bothered about this particular ideology until I came to South Africa... I mean this concept actually blew off my mind, when I came here...

In India, we generally never talk about Race... we talk about Poverty, GDP, Corruption, Education, Rape... (oh my god that IS a big topic), Women's Liberation, and many  more, but never about racial inequalities...

That is a topic, that the western media makes a big hue and cry about... but when I came to South Africa... it was the first time, I was confronted with this notion and how this very vague idea is slowly transforming into a living, breathing reality for me.

My first interaction with this topic came from my domestic. She is a really nice lady, might I say, a black lady... it is important that I point this out, because, the first day when she and I were indulging in our first introductions, she touched my hand and said to me " I have never worked for this people "... her exact words... first, honestly I didn't understand, and then it came to me, actually it thundered onto me, SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT THE COLOR OF MY SKIN.... wow... it was the first time, in my 30 years of life that someone has actually commented on my SKIN COLOR...in a way that made me really THINK about it... Actually I should have taken offense, but after saying this, she was smiling at me, and I couldn't help but reply, " This color is of Gandhi, you know Gandhi "... and she nodded her head in enthusiasm...  "Oh a great man, great man, he did a lot for us..."

The most odd thing about this entire conversation was, when she pointed me my color, the first person that came to my mind was the one that my countrymen have generally forgotten, and when I did mention Gandhi, she said, he was indeed a great, great man... my domestic, might I say, is an extremely poor South African Lady....and she knew that Gandhi had done great things for her country...something Indian young men and women have comfortably chosen to forget...

Anyhow, so these issue are there in my mind and I do not know which one to concentrate upon, Atheism, Racism, India's relationship to Gandhi and his ideals, (well which most Indians think are dead now)... and therefore I am suffering from a Writer's Block...

Or am I ??

I really need to find out...


Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Taking the control in your hands, a necessary read for all types of women...

I have been thinking about whether to upload this post or not for some time, and then I thought maybe someone in my position would probably find it useful.

Ok, first of all, this post isn't at all for kids, so if you, my dear reader, is not above 18 please do not read further, ( of course, if you are below 18 and sexually active, then please ignore the former sentence and do read on). Second of all, this post isn't for those who blindly and devotedly believe in religion, whatever faith that might be, if you are a blind follower and believe in your respective religion or faith keeping aside common sense, this post isn't for you. So now that I have given out my mandatory warnings, let me begin...

I am writing this post primarily for women, for women like me... wherever you are and whatever you do, I hope if you were ever or would be in my position in the foreseeable future, you would find this post helpful.

I am 30 years old, married (very happy too..!!!) and have just completed a year and two months of marital bliss. As like many other couple who take steps to ensure that extension of the family is well planned, we too have taken some such measures and we follow them scrupulously... not that we don't like children, or we don't want to have them... we love kids, and we would love a family of our own... but not now, not unless we are ready for them... so anyway, one fine night our method of contraception didn't work out as it should have and I faced the terrible consequence of being pregnant with a child. The morning after the beautiful night, both me and my husband realized the gravity of the situation and we started discussing, whether or not to take the "morning-after pill"... now let me tell you straight away, I scoured the internet and numerous blogs, for more information on emergency contraceptive pills, and though I found a lot of information, I did not get a single article or post of a woman, who might have taken the pill herself. No real life account of real women who have taken the pill. That is one of my most important reason of writing this post so that, if someone is in my position, they can come across this blog post and learn about a real life incident, because this is what happened to me.

Also, please allow me to state here, in my defense, that I am an average healthy woman (touchwood...!!) and I really do not believe in medication of any kind... I was extremely reluctant to take the pill, educated and learned as we were, there were some lingering doubts. Also, although we are followers of the Hindu faith, our religion does not say anything about this... or probably we are not aware of it... anyhow, we really went over every single internet article we could find on the Emergency Contraceptive Pill and its after effects. When we were somewhat sure, that the pill is not life-threatening, I decided to take it.

I took the Plan B One Step, an Emergency Contraceptive, that can be obtained over the counter in most drug stores in USA, I really don't have much idea, which Emergency Contraceptive Pills are available in other countries, but I am sure, some kind of pill is definitely available.

I was also extremely doubtful of it's working and wasn't even sure that it'll work... but work it did, and I am extremely glad to say that I did take it and also at the right time.

I know a lot of women, conceive when they are not ready, or not mentally prepared. Ladies, it's fine, it's not something wrong not to be prepared for a child. And even if it does happen, you still can control it... I am giving below some sites that I had searched when deciding whether or not to take this particular medicine.

http://ec.princeton.edu/info/ecp.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_contraception

http://www.safersex.co.za/family-planning-Emergency-Contraceptives.htm

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/emergency-contraception-morning-after-pill-4363.asp

These are the sites I visited before I took the "morning-after pill"... it is essentially a very safe medicine. I did not experience any side effects... of course I drank a lot of water for about a week daily after taking the medication and these are not "abortion pills"... If you have the pills, within 72 hours of unprotected physical intimacy, they work absolutely fine. I took them within 48 hours, of course, all the sites I visited said the earlier you take it the better.

So please, if any of you are in my situation and are confused and you don't know what to do and you are not ready to bring a child into this world, think about this pill... it's supposed to be absolutely safe and does not harm you or your reproductive ability. If you have already conceived, then the pill does not hurt the unborn foetus.

There are a huge number of unintended or mistimed pregnancies happening all over the world. According to Wikipedia, about 38 percent of all pregnancies in the world are unintended or mistimed. This also results in a large number of maternal deaths and infant deaths. Also the health of the mother and the child could be gravely affected.

Bringing a child into this world is a huge responsibility, and a lot of educated women like me know this. We all want to give the best of everything to our child, and we should also. Therefore it's even more important to bring a child into this world, when and if you are ready for it. To me, personally, motherhood is the greatest gift nature has endowed on women, and therefore it's a huge and life changing decision for me and I can say, that I am not ready as of yet. All I can say, that if you are not ready to bring a child in this world, take precautions to prevent it. Again, let me stress, that I do not advocate abortion in any case and thus knowing about the options available makes us powerful.

Also, as this issue is quite sensitive, a lot of you may not be comfortable talking about it to your parents or even friends, I know, for one, I would not have been able to talk about this to my parents... I actually haven't. I don't think these measures were available during their time, and even if they were available, probably it was a sin to even put them into practice.

But times have changed now, now we can really take control of our lives, the way we want to, and that's why I wrote this post. I really hope that this post helps someone who's in need, because trust me, having a real life account helps tremendously... I didn't have it, I hope you do...please if you come across this, do share it because it is only information that makes us powerful.


Wednesday, July 10, 2013

My Life as a Wanderlust : The Black, The Grey and The White...

It's almost been three months of stay for me and my husband here in South Africa.
 Before taking a trip down here, there are two things which we searched about the most.

First, of course, the places to visit and secondly, Indian Restaurants ( as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, we are foodies of the greatest nature).

About the first, we haven't been to any of the famous places that one would normally come across while Goggling "South Africa", but I managed to go to the one place that I was hell bent on and which really shook us, it instilled a feeling in us about the place where we are living and the legacy it carried for all of us.

The place I am talking about is the Apartheid Museum. Anybody who has been to South Africa or plan to visit South Africa, trust me, your journey would remain half complete if you don't visit this place. I am a huge history buff so wherever I go, I make sure that I read some of the nations' history, otherwise not knowing about the country, about it's people, about the legacy, makes me feel incomplete.

We have all heard of the heinous practice of Apartheid which was taken and practiced as a State Policy here in South Africa and the practice ended only in 1991. A lot of my friends of Facebook, didn't know that Apartheid ended only in 1991, this is extremely recent for people of our age... I mean we were all in school at the time... Anyhow when I had first heard of the place, I made sure, that this was a "must see" on my list.

I am giving below the link of the Museum's site, if anyone is interested in finding out more, and really the more you know, the more will you be surprised.

http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/

The first thing that strikes you is that the tickets that are given randomly distinguish people into Whites and Non-Whites... no there is nothing racial about it, me and my husband are both Asian, we got two tickets, one labelled "White" (Blanke in Afrikaans) and "Non-White" ( Nie-Blanke) and then we had to go through separate doors titled the same, into a tunnel kind of exhibition... this act in itself strikes you as extremely discriminating... it did to me, but that's exactly what used to happen down here. Then there is a passageway and an exhibition showing us enlarged posters of the "Identity cards" that people carried. The thing that felt strange to me was, besides name,  and gender, there was the "Ethnic" grouping. Also there was a group called "the chameleons" well, surprising as it may sound, the Apartheid Government termed the Citizens of the country so in 1985. This group of people officially changed their Ethnicity  from either "Indians" to Coloured, Coloureds to Indians, Malays to Coloured and so on...

When we emerge from this horrendous passage, we are re-united with our co-passengers, who had been passing through another similar tunnel... We emerged into an open courtyard where the Johannesburg sun was shinning down... it felt like a breadth of fresh air... the sensation after passing through a tunnel, the exhibits of which keep reminding you of your Ethnicity, to say the least, is not at all pleasant. I just imagined, what might have been the situation for this country's citizens who had to carry those evil cards at all times which shrieked out distinction and you could do nothing about it...

There were many, many similar exhibits stating the history of South Africa. The settlement of the Dutch colonists on the western capes of the country, who first trekked up the Highvelds into the interior to set up cities such as Johannesburg and Pretoria, how the English came later and the beginning of the Apartheid ideology which started as an innocent idea to preserve the culture, tradition and the history of the first "Afrikaan" people and then turned into an heinous practice and later into a hated state policy.

As one passes through the museum, one is time and again reminded of the differences that exist among us, and also reminds us, that it is these differences which unites us rather than divide us... Sure we are different, each and every individual is different, but it is this, that makes us "humans" , if we were all same, we would rather have been machines...

At the end of all the exhibitions, there is a place, a kind of forest with a huge man-made lake, the clear waters of the lake reflect back at you and you realize whatever our race may be, whatever our color, whatever our language may be, and whatever our religion, we still are "human beings" and that's the only thing that's worthy about us.

A visit to this place actually makes you evaluate your humanity. It drills into you that no matter how bad the conditions may be, there can still be hope for better...



Reflection muses...

Language is the basis for recapturing experience...

- Cyhthia Selfae