Full Text Available

Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.

Long walk to press freedom: the media framing of the April 2015 xenophobic attacks in South Africa

This thesis enquires into the collective violence against foreigners in South Africa in April 2015. The aim of the study is to investigate the manner in which the media framed the attacks, and to analyse how both victims and perpetrators were presented in news articles. The research process utilised...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dahlback, Ida Titlestad
Other Authors: Lamb, Guy
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Political Studies 2020
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This thesis enquires into the collective violence against foreigners in South Africa in April 2015. The aim of the study is to investigate the manner in which the media framed the attacks, and to analyse how both victims and perpetrators were presented in news articles. The research process utilised in this study is qualitative content analysis, and the study analyses 68 articles by six online news publications between the 13th and the 21st of April 2015. The thesis determines that the Daily Sun, News24, Independent Online (IOL News), Eyewitness News (EWN), Mail & Guardian, and the Daily Maverick presented both balanced and biased content between the 13th and 21st of April 2015. There was a great variety in how objectively the online news publications framed immigrants. Several online news publications included numerous sources and counter-arguments, while others did not. The Mail & Guardian and the Daily Maverick presented the most in-depth coverage of the violence, while the Daily Sun, News24, Independent Online (IOL News), and Eyewitness News (EWN) uncritically reproduced xenophobic language and statements during the attacks.