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

• Main Author: Dahlback, Ida Titlestad
• Other Authors: Lamb, Guy
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Humanities 2020
• Subjects: International Relations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/31519

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.