Abstract
This article offers an analytic exploration of self-disclosed accounts by consumers of self-help media with regard to how their engagement with these texts influences their self-identifying efforts. Relying on a thematic discourse analysis of data from in-depth interviews with 10 black avid self-help consumers, this article outlines in what ways, according to these individuals, their notions of self-identity are impacted by the self-help texts they consume. A relationship between self-help media consumption and self-identity, I argue, exists based on the grounds that the educational nature of the self-help text renders it a key tool of ‘guidance’ to these self-help consumers. It is a guidance that is intricately linked to the media’s endorsement of mediated experiences – through various communication technologies – from which consumers of these distant experiences vicariously ‘learn’ to ultimately attribute these lessons to their own social relations. This, in turn, allows for the carving of their own identities based on the ‘ideas’ they have at their disposal.
Highlights
The concept ‘self-help’, in this article, is used to describe the process of obtaining information or advice for resolving perceived problems, of a personal or psychological nature
The media, through a popularised culture of remembrance, play a defining role in the enhancement and perpetuation of the country’s historical memory which is exposed to the younger generation citizens. These citizens – descendants of individuals from various of the racial groups – were not directly present in the state of affairs under the apartheid regime, but are implicated by the historical memory of the country. It is through these moments of remembrance in the form of, for instance, television media and other technologically-advanced online video platforms’ mass dissemination of documentaries and films about the ‘struggle’ faced, to a significant extent, by black South Africans; that the identities of the current generation are partly constructed
This article, relying on this discovery, argues for a relationship between self-identity and self-help consumption in that the consumers of self-help media texts participating in this study cling on to the pedagogical nature entrenched within these texts to ‘learn’ from distant experiences that are used to, firstly, compare as well as determine how to behave ‘appropriately’ to be the best ‘you’ that you are capable of
Summary
The concept ‘self-help’, in this article, is used to describe the process of obtaining information or advice for resolving perceived problems, of a personal or psychological nature. These citizens – descendants of individuals from various of the racial groups – were not directly present in the state of affairs under the apartheid regime, but are implicated by the historical memory of the country It is through these moments of remembrance in the form of, for instance, television media and other technologically-advanced online video platforms’ mass dissemination of documentaries and films about the ‘struggle’ faced, to a significant extent, by black South Africans (and those of other races who stood in solidary with them); that the identities of the current generation are partly constructed. We witness, the deployment of socio-politically embedded notions such as ‘previously disadvantaged’ tied to black identities and – mostly imposed through discursive ‘force’ – white identities being tied to ideas of ‘privilege’ This is just one way in which the media (and communication technologies) are directly involved in the construction of individual and social (collective) identities in post-apartheid South Africa. In very subtle or obvious attempts at ‘performing’ a particular sense of self across various social contexts which, once again, impacts self-identification efforts
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