'Foreigners are stealing our birth right': Moral panics and the discursive construction of Zimbabwean immigrants in South African media
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Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Abstract
We examine 575 randomly selected articles on Zimbabwean immigrants from the South African
Media (SAM) database to expose discourses of exclusion and the production of the psycho-social
condition - moral panic. We use critical discourse analysis, notions of remediation and immediacy
to scrutinize discourse structures and other discursive strategies designed to conceal mediation
and authorial prejudices, and to make the reader 'experience' the actual content. In addition to
making the anti-immigrant rhetoric appear legitimate, and the danger immediate and real, we
argue that the apparent seamless content is often biased by selection and structured in such a way
as to deny voice to immigrants and their advocates. Among other things, we conclude that since
the readers' interpretations are filtered through lenses of subjectivities defined by communicative
contexts characterized by job scarcity, poverty, crime and wanting healthcare, the news content
heightens anxiety and miseducates more than it enlightens readers on migration issues. Hence
there is a danger of SAM becoming unwitting conveyors of the same vices they preach against.
Description
Keywords
Communicative contexts, Discourse structures, Immediacy, Immigration, Media, Moral panics, Remediation, South Africa, Xenophobia, Zimbabwe
Citation
Banda, F. & Mawadza, A. (2014). 'Foreigners are stealing our
birth right': Moral panics and
the discursive construction of
Zimbabwean immigrants in
South African media. Discourse & Communication, 9(1): 47� 64