The Impact of the South African Elite Print Media discourse on migration as a functional entity for the social construction of fear

Abstract

While news coverage on the negative impacts of migration in South Africa’s elite print media is widespread visible and accepted in common public argumentations, the included mechanisms and implications of such rhetoric remain invisible. This invisibility is a consequence of normalization processes, causing certain viewpoints and argumentations to appear as emotional free and purely facts. Feminist theory states the social construction of emotions, with no emotion being free from social influence and no presentation of information being free from emotions. Applied to content production in the media, these phenomena are part of current journalistic praxis, defined as War Journalism by defenders of Peace Journalism. This research does not only seek to uncover how migrants are depicted, but also what can be stated on South Africa’s conditions on identity and state formation. The results reveal a fear loaded discourse leading to anxiety in South Africa’s society, preparing the ground for securitization and the application of expanded control through state and military forces.