Framing the narrative: a comparative content analysis of how South African mainstream and alternative youth media reported on the 2015 student revolution
Date
2017
Authors
Zimbizi, Doreen
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Abstract
The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how alternative youth media, particularly onlinebased news sources, in covering the #FeesMustFall (#FMF) campaign 2015 students protest from October 14, 2015 to October 23, 2015, challenged news framing, while shifting traditional mainstream media’s agenda-setting role. In post-apartheid South Africa in 2015, which was dubbed “the year of the student”, the history of student politics was significant in what culminated in the hashtag #FeesMustFall campaign, challenging the representation of student protesters in the media. The unprecedented local and international alternative youth media and mainstream media coverage of the 2015 student protests—in print, online and on social media platforms—signaled the impact of the biggest student protests since 1994. The results from this qualitative research sampling online-based news platforms and interviews with journalists for their opinions on the blanket media coverage of the protests, shows a significant paradigm shift in how newsrooms re-examined what would be a silent consensus of framing and agenda-setting as was dictated by alternative youth media.
Description
Submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for an MA in Journalism and Media Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Witwatersrand, August 2017
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Citation
Zimbizi, Doreen (2017) Framing the narrative: a comparative content analysis of how South African mainstream and alternative youth media reported on the 2015 student revolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, <https://hdl.handle.net/10539/24573>