Browsing by Author "Jani, Clifford."

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A discursive analysis of the construction of Afrophobia in TimesLive, News24 and Independent Online in South Africa, 2019 - 2022.
(2024) Jani, Clifford.; Dyll, Lauren Eva.
Immigration has become a global phenomenon where nearly half of the world‘s populations are refugees, migrants or asylum seekers. However, the representation of black African migrants has not been fair and balanced leading to studies outlining the negative representation of migrants in the media. Previous scholarship has explored how such reporting could be deemed xenophobic. This study is specifically interested in the phenomenon of Afrophobia, defined as fear of black people or systematic discrimination against people with African ancestry (Dube, 2019). This study explores the representation of black African migrants in Timeslive, News24 and IOL news sites and how the reporting language may be used in the construction of Afrophobic sentiments. The study utilises content analysis to gather data. A total of 66 news articles were purposively selected from the three news sites. The data is grouped according to emerging themes: illegality, undocumented migrants, job takers, criminals and drug dealers. Critical discourse analysis is used to analyse the discursive portrayal of black African migrants. The focus of the analysis is on how Afrophobia is problematised and transformed into a discursive crisis through the construction of anti-immigrant themes. Representation theory and post-colonial theory conceptually guide this study. Although the findings of this study generally support earlier studies which argue that the media representation of black Africans is negative, the critical discourse analysis also revealed sympathetic representations available in the news. The study‘s unique contributions are that it explores the Afrophobic sentiments manifested as prejudices and stereotypes, and systemic discrimination faced by foreign nationals in South Africa, through the online news as they are depicted as criminals, drug dealers and illegal or undocumented people, blamed for social ills in South Africa. It also reveals positive reporting where black African migrants are portrayed as entrepreneurs, employing the local population and adding value to the economy. However, the negative homogenous reporting of black African migrants is still prevalent.
The good, the bad and the balanced: a critical analysis of the representation of the black African migrants in the South African Daily News and Daily Sun newspapers, 2016- 2017.
(2019) Jani, Clifford.; Dyll, Lauren Eva.
The number of black African migrants in South Africa keep rising and currently stands at around two million despite the xenophobic attacks (Statistics South Africa's 2011). The post-apartheid era in South Africa has witnessed an influx of both permanent and temporary African and Asian migrants (Enigbokan et al. 2015: 3). The representation of black African migrants in the press remains contested, with some studies acknowledging the dominance of a negative and biased portrayal of Black African migrants in the press (Danso and McDonald 2001). This paper analysed how black African migrants are represented in some of the dominant newspapers in Durban, South Africa. Content and critical discourse analyses were used to examine the keywords, tone and metaphors in newspaper articles to identify how black African migrants are represented. Stories about refugees, immigrants, foreigners and asylum seekers were selected for analysis across 40 news articles in the two newspapers. Data were analysed using a two-step process of content analysis and critical discourse analysis. The research findings from this study indicate that black African migrants in the two newspapers are presented using more negative than positive metaphors. One of the critical findings of this study is the negative association of black African migrants with ‘illegality’, ‘drug dealing’ and ‘crime’. The study noted a few newspaper reports on the successes of migrants. The press tends to cover more of the gory activities of the black African migrants. This study analysed the linguistic character of newspaper content pertaining to black African migrants during the period 2016 – 2017. It then identified significant patterns that are consistent with extant literature on media constructions of migrants and the migration debate. Overall, the study established that black African migrants are portrayed negatively in most news articles.