Journalists important to Africa's digital revolution

Speaking at the three-day 12th Highway Africa Conference, which started on Monday at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Padayachie said: "Media workers had an excellent opportunity to mobilise, educate and bring mass of awareness of Digital Migration to ordinary people."

South Africa has already begun implementing the changeover phase from analogue broadcasting to digital broadcasting.

This was one of the FIFA requirements South Africa agreed to when bidding to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup, apart from other technology infrastructure.

Department of Education Director General, Lyndall Shope-Mafole said part of the success of hosting the world cup, would some as a result of the technology infrastructure that the continent was currently putting in place.

The conference, which is themed "Journalism, Journalism for Citizens," aims to create a platform for debate by journalists on Information and Communication Technologies.

Rhodes University's Vice Chancellor, Saleem Badat said the theme speaks to the larger theme of citizenship and belonging, and that the media could be a vital force in the democratisation and intellectual, cultural, economic and social development of African societies.

He said he hoped that the conference would be able to discuss and generate creative ideas and innovative strategies on how information and communication technologies could develop journalism to enhance social justice, democracy and development on the African continent.

The Highway Africa Conference is a partnership between Department of Communications, Rhodes University's School of Journalism and Media Studies and the South African Broadcasting Services, with the support of several partners, development agencies and sponsors.

For eleven years the Highway Africa Conference has been at the centre of Africa's debate on journalism and new media and has become the largest annual gathering of African journalists in the world.

The conference has evolved into a multi-pronged programme including mapping the terrain of the challenges of the interface of technology, journalism and the media, and also making practical intervention by re-skilling, educating and training journalists.

In the statement, the Highway Africa affirmed that mobile chat services such as MXit could no longer be viewed as tools for mobile social networking, however, people would be using such platforms to produce and distribute news.

The MXit phenomenon would be one of the topics of discussion during the conference and the advent of citizen journalism means that audiences would not only consume media, but would be able to generate and publish it too, suing popular online platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.

Article published courtesy of BuaNews

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• Blog: [Highway Africa] 2008 Digital Journalism award winners
  
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