CCMS students excited about their revamped website.CCMS Revamps and Launches Website
The Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS) within the School of Applied Human Sciences recently launched their revamped website which has generated about a million views already.
Asked about this defining moment for CCMS, UKZN’s Professor Keyan Tomaselli said: ‘Browsers are accessing it for research, for information on our courses, for news of our activities, which is exactly our intention. We feel just great and delighted that UKZN has occupied this virtual space with regard to providing access to cultural and media studies research output in Africa.’
‘We field calls daily from international students - who have stumbled upon the site while conducting their research - inquiring about registration for 2014. Additionally, many students from other local universities often ask permission to use work uploaded on our site.
‘This site is a resource for students at UKZN and beyond. What’s really exciting is that students have learned web management as part of their professional hands-on activities,’ said Tomaselli.
The response from browsers numbers well over 3 000 hits a day as CCMS heads towards the million mark since 27 September 2010. The site is constantly refreshed and new alerts are circulated regularly, thus sustaining interest and repeat browsers.
The site, under the auspices of the UNESCO Chair in Communication, Professor Ruth Teer-Tomaselli, hosts two open access peer-reviewed journals, African Communication Research and Journal of East African Communication, and contains links for Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies and the Journal of African Cinemas. Beyond these, many of CCMS books are on open access, as are theses, student projects and registration information.
‘The CCMS website has always attracted top international students to UKZN, so it plays a vital recruitment role,’ said Tomaselli. ‘Also, anticipating the UKZN 2007-12 Strategic plan, we wanted to showcase the work done by CCMS students and researchers to the world at large. In fact, the site has become a hub for a lot of work on African cultural and media studies, locating UKZN as a pre-eminent leader on African scholarship in the field.
‘One of our Centre’s sponsors, Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa, wanted this work made globally accessible as along with its parent institution, the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is of the opinion that the CCMS’s work on public health communication is cutting edge globally. They wanted CCMS’s knowledge on public health interventions and campaign strategy to be popularised all over the world.
Postgraduate CCMS student Ms Tasmin Paul expressed her delight at the CCMS website. ‘The site is easy to navigate through, user-friendly and provides access to many theses and dissertations online. It’s also a great recruitment and marketing tool.’
Another postgraduate student, Mr Itunu Bodunrin of Nigeria, praised CCMS for their website and wealth of information which motivated him to complete his Honours at the Centre.
The CCMS site can be accessed via (http://ccms.ukzn.ac.za)
- Melissa Mungroo