Abstract
The advent of interactive social media networking sites has provoked institutions of higher learning globally to integrate new technologies into their undergraduate recruitment advertising processes. The challenge for institutions of higher learning is to explore efficient ways of managing information in order to attract and encourage prospective students to pursue tertiary education by incorporating and exploiting the tools available on social networking platforms. Strategic communication involves the intentional effort to communicate with stakeholders purposefully and intelligently in a manner that meets and satisfies their needs. The objective of this study was to discover whether video-based promotional campaigns by UJ FEBE in English are satisfying the informational needs of Grade 12 Maths and Science learners (prospective undergraduate students) from indigenous communities. A review on the existing scholarly narrative reveals that rarer is the study that examines video-based promotional materials, to discover whether they are satisfying prospective student-consumers’ informational requirements. Some of the findings derived after modelling a qualitative research approach distinctly indicate that UJ FEBE’s current video-based recruitment advertisements do not meet the informational needs of learners in indigenous communities. The research participants have distinctly recommended that for recruiters to better resonate with high school learners from indigenous communities “understandable English” and/or “simple English words” should be used. The lack of vocabulary repertory in the English language by indigenous learners challenges their holistic comprehension of promotional advertisements. The linguistic orientation of video-based advertisements can thus not be downplayed. It is thus pivotal for UJ FEBE to consider linguistic diversity in the development of their online video-based recruitment advertisements to avoid marginalisation of learners from indigenous communities.