This study explored the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic impact, with its unprecedented isolation norm and social distancing requirements, on African immigrants in the United States. We focused on the sources of meaning in their daily lives, how they navigated their meaning-making process, and cultural proclivities amidst the official and unofficial mandates for social distancing. Additionally, we investigated the role technologies play in the entire process. A qualitative inquiry conducted virtually generated data from a sample of 20 participants. Results show that African immigrants derive meaning from social relationships, personal life goals, religious faith, service, and good health. The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly threatened participants' core meaning sources, which they rely on for life satisfaction, personal growth, and healing. Various emergent technologies helped in ameliorating the situation by providing conduits for participants to engage, albeit virtually, in most activities that positively impact their lives. This study highlights clinicians' need to integrate meaning in life discussions in their African immigrant patients' care and incorporate congruent technologies as needed.
Much has been written during the first decade of the new millennium about the potential of digital technologies to produce a transformation of education. Digital technologies are portrayed as tools that will enhance learner collaboration and motivation and develop new multimodal literacy skills. Accompanying this has been the move from understanding literacy on the cognitive level to an appreciation of the sociocultural forces shaping learner development. Responding to these claims, the Digital Education and Learning Series explores the pedagogical potential and realities of digital technologies in a wide range of disciplinary contexts across the educational spectrum both in and outside of class. Focusing on local and global perspectives, the series responds to the shifting landscape of education, the way digital technologies are being used in different educational and cultural contexts, and examines the differences that lie behind the generalizations of the digital age. Incorporating cutting edge volumes with theoretical perspectives and case studies (single authored and edited collections), the series provides an accessible and valuable resource for academic researchers, teacher trainers, administrators and students interested in interdisciplinary studies of education and new and emerging technologies.
Over several decades, scholars have questioned the multilateralism of journalism education on the grounds that journalism education adopts a dominant paradigm that renders it predominantly Western. The argument, however, is polarized; on one hand, some scholars have proposed a de-Westernization of journalism education, on the other hand, a dissenting opinion argues that global journalism curriculum is multilateral. Despite several attempts by scholars and international organizations, specifically, the UNESCO, through the International Programme for Development of Communication (IPDC), to de-Westernize journalism curriculum, remnants of the dominant paradigm still persist. I concede that striking attempts have been made to de-Westernize and glocalize journalism curriculum; therefore, my central argument hinges on the thesis that instead of resisting and discarding the UNESCO model, and other Western influences, reformation and adaptation through glocalization and hybridization is encouraged. As such, this article conceptualizes and concretizes practical application of glocalization through a collaborative venture between a U.S.-based scholar and Ugandan scholars in developing a locally congruent curriculum for a brand new journalism program at a university in Uganda.
This paper is an ethnomusicological and media studies collaborative study that discusses the politics of representation on media health images, especially HIV/AIDS in Africa, and how a South African AIDS support group and choral ensemble offers a counter-narrative to the images that are seen in the Western media. Using ethnographic data on the group's organization, music events, and interviews with choir members, we argue that Siphithemba Choir's story is a narrative of self-representation that subverts the appropriation of their story by the scientific community, and counters the helpless image of HIV-infected individuals that often comprise the face of HIV/AIDS in Africa in the mainstream media.
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