Screening culture, tweeting politics1: Media citizenship and the politics of representation on SABC2

Abstract

Abstract This article considers the concept of media and citizenship in relation to the politics of representation on the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s channel 2 (SABC2). It examines the ways in which a group of audience members negotiate and reflect upon issues of representation on SABC2’s flagship soap opera 7de Laan, which professes to be a multicultural soap opera, paying reverence to the diverse cultural, ethnic and linguistic make-up of South Africa. In previous work, I have argued that the soap opera presents a utopian view of community and citizenship in contemporary South Africa. Building on this observation, this article explores audience engagement with 7de Laan’s utopian construction of South African citizenship through a social networking site, Twitter. It examines the ways in which a group of audience members negotiate and reflect upon issues of representation on 7de Laan through the Twitter hashtag #7delaan, arguing that Twitter provides a platform for viewer fans engaged in a love/hate relationship with television to ‘bamboozle back’. My primary interest in the #7delaan community is therefore centred not only on what the community members tweet but more so on how their tweets frame the soap opera and their perceptions thereof, and to try to understand what these discourses might reveal about their perceptions of place, race and citizenship in contemporary South Africa.