Call to adults: Please be responsible
Last year, Dr Wallace Chigona of the University of Cape Town conducted research into the media discourse around a popular mobile instant messaging service in South Africa. The critical discourse analysis showed that:
- the media discourse is fraught with distortions;
- the media have mainly used the voice of adults to legitimise the discourse and the voices of the youth who are the main users of the application are missing; and
- there seems to be a moral panic developing around the use of MXit.
One of the newspapers that was analysed quotes a high school principal as saying: “MXit is one of the major evils of the 21st century.” (Remember, the 21st century has seen 9/11, and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo).