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Many PhD students have strong reading comprehension, but some struggle with how to read critically. The purpose of this study is to understand what reading looks like for PhD students, what they are doing when they read scholarly texts and how they bring these texts to life in meaningful ways.

The authors conducted a self-study using a phenomenological research approach. Five PhD students collected data on their academic reading for three weeks, including the references, purpose for reading, and what they did as part of the reading process. Second, students analyzed their reading processes according to Paul and Elder’s (2006) intellectual standards. Third, students participated in two semi-structured discussions about the standards in relation to doctoral reading.

Reading is inseparable from thinking, with Paul and Elder’s (2006) intellectual standards (e.g. clarity, relevance, logic and fairness) playing an essential role in the academic reading process. Alongside these cognitive aspects of reading, the affective domain also contributes to the reading process.

This study is important because being able to read scholarly work is crucial for completing doctoral programs, conducting research, and publishing. We suggest that just as we need to teach writing, we need to acknowledge that many doctoral students need guidance to read scholarly texts, they need to be educated on the intellectual standards, and supervisors must rest their assumptions about doctoral reading and explicitly teach these processes.

This study answers the call for research and theorising exploring ethical communication and brand risk from the African continent. The study's purpose was to identify the challenges that strategic communication practitioners face in enacting ethical crisis communication in South Africa.

The researchers conducted ten in-depth interviews with South African strategic communication professionals.

The dominant theme emerging from the study is the marginalisation and exclusion of the communication function in decision-making during crisis situations. Communicators were viewed as implementers, technicians and not strategic counsel. The protection of organisational reputation was done at the expense of the ethics and moral conscience of practitioners. Practitioners were viewed and deployed as spin doctors and tools to face unwanted media interactions.

The article sheds light on the concepts of ethical communication and decision-making in a multicultural African context using the moral theory of Ubuntu and strategic communication. It demonstrates the tension professionals experience as they toggle between unethical capitalist approaches and African values. The practitioner's role as organisational moral conscience is hindered, suppressed and undermined by organisational leadership's directives to use opaque, complex communication, selective transparency and misrepresentation of facts.