Eliza Govender

Futures on Air episode 3: #CommunityRadio stations from the South West talk about the importance of participation, with reflections from Professor Vinod Pavarala, the Unesco Chair on Community Media @vpavarala #FUTURES2022 @uniofbathengage mixcloud.com/Futures_on_Air…

A successful and engaging day. Thank you to @mdkorosec for facilitating such an important workshop. @gugs36 @toksmntambo

@CCMSUKZN Family ❤ Thank you @ElizaGovender @ProfSarahGibson

@ProfSarahGibson South Africa has a track record of utilizing entertainment education for health promotion. We see this with our localised responses to the HIV pandemic. Learning and educating through humor and entertainment is definitely part of our South African pandemic response.

I looked at how this global pandemic has seen a resurgence of the nation-building project in South Africa - seen in watching the televised live presidential addresses, the political rhetoric of the speeches, and circulation of memetic media. #CommunicatingCOVID #CroakeyREAD

I was interested in the role of social media and participatory culture in spreading health-communication messages and humorous memes in order to stop the spread of the virus. #CommunicatingCOVID #CroakeyREAD

Harnessing the potential of community engagement during pandemic requires us to address the challenges, contradictions and consequences of our dominant public health responses but also highlights the need to re-position, re-visit and re-amplify the voices of communities.

COVID-19 has reminded us to think about health in an interdisciplinary way, and too create new spaces for engagement, dialogue and digital conversations. #CroakeyREAD

What does physical distancing mean for a student who has returned home in lockdown to a crowded space with 10 family members? #CroakeyREAD

With limited vaccine access, our non-pharmaceutical interventions remain a priority but community voices in our pandemic responses is fundamental to advance localise our responses. #CroakeyREAD

Relinquishing fundamental dialogical and communicative practices for communities in a pandemic response impacts the uptake of COVID-19 preventative measures and behaviour change. #CroakeyREAD

The powerful role of communities and understanding their lived experiences must remain our evidence-based reality to advance COVID-19 prevention. #CroakeyREAD

my adoption of health communication is through the lens of development communication which ‘invokes new ways of harnessing media and localised cultural frames in promoting health initiatives and community development #CroakeyREAD

My point of departure in this chapter, is highlighting that most health communication approaches stringently adopt a public health or health promotion strategy that are often devoid of the communicative practices or community voices. #CroakeyREAD

I explore some of these examples of community voices and responses to issues of physical distancing, specifically highlighting the urgency to give communities voices to deconstruct and reconstruct their own health imperatives in a dominated public health world. #CroakeyREAD

“People living in South Africa’s black townships face the choice of staying at home and starving or going out to work and risk being infected” #CroakeyREAD

“living in dire social and economic conditions makes it difficult for people in black townships to observe global ‘gold standard’ measures aimed at curbing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as social distancing and isolation” #CroakeyREAD

Some considerations as we think about what physical distancing actually means from research: “Social distancing is a privilege – and one that not all countries, are able to afford”’ #CroakeyREAD

In collecting data and conducting research with communities, physical distancing was not a message most people could adhere too during a lockdown. #CroakeyREAD

My chapter specifically challenges the physical distancing as one of the key non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for South African communities during the initial phase of the national lockdown. #CroakeyREAD

My chapter calls for communication that addresses structural inequalities and promotes ‘people-centred communication’. Pandemic communication must allow listening with responsibility and accountability, it calls for ethically listening to community voices. #CroakeyREAD