Abstract
M.Ed.
The research focussed on the idea of how television could play a role in the empowerment of a historically disadvantaged community, namely the marginalised gay community. The inquiry looked at television as an influential medium of mass communication and investigated a number of issues related to this problem. Firstly, it probed the views of gay people on the effectiveness of television as a medium of education and empowerment. Secondly, it established whether or not gay people desired an exclusively gay magazine programme on television to address the issues that were pertinent to their community. It also explored how gay men and women viewed television as a role-player in changing perceptions that non-gay people held about homosexuals. And lastly it examined the content that homosexuals deemed important for an exclusively gay magazine programme. The study revealed the struggles of gay people in coming to terms with both their sexual orientation and the concomitant prejudice of many heterosexuals. It also showed how televsion could be a way of acknowledging gay people's need to be accepted as fellow human beings. The study gave insight into how this difference in sexual orientation related to the concept of equality embodied by the new South African constitution, which had an impact on broadcasting policies. The gay community and its needs with regard to television programming were analysed within the paradigm of the symbolic construction of a community. The issues were studied in the context of participatory dialogue where it was shown that in order to express these symbols openly in a society founded upon heterosexism, homosexuals had to participate in the process of their own empowerment by playing a role in the demand for and the design of an exclusively gay programme.