Shaping Coverage of #Feesmustfall: Investigation of Facebook and Twitter as agenda-setters for South African Newspapers The Times, Daily Sun and The Star

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate social media as an agenda-setter and source of news for print media. The #FeesMustFall student protests, which began on 14 October 2015, is used as a case study for the purposes of the research. The first phase of the project involved collecting and analyzing news articles from the Daily Sun, Times and The Star newspapers. Additional data was collected from Twitter and Facebook to identify the top posters around #FeesMustFall and analyze whether any issues pertinent in social media were covered by the print publications mentioned above. The second phase drew on information from journalists and newspaper editors at the three newspapers. The findings were that social media did play a role as an agenda-setter in varying degrees in the respective newspapers and that there are implications for Journalists in South Africa, in utilizing the platform, in their day to day work.