'Foreigners are stealing our birth right': Moral panics and the discursive construction of Zimbabwean immigrants in South African media

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dc.contributor.authorBanda, Felix
dc.contributor.authorMawadza, Aquilina
dc.date.accessioned24/04/2017 15:30
dc.date.available24/04/2017 15:30
dc.date.issued2014
dc.description.abstractWe 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.en_US
dc.description.accreditationISIen_US
dc.identifier.citationBanda, 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� 64en_US
dc.identifier.issn1750-4813
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10566/2750
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1750481314555263
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.privacy.showsubmitterFALSE
dc.publisherSAGE Publicationsen_US
dc.rightsThis is the post-print version of the article found online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1750481314555263
dc.status.ispeerreviewedTRUE
dc.subjectCommunicative contextsen_US
dc.subjectDiscourse structuresen_US
dc.subjectImmediacyen_US
dc.subjectImmigrationen_US
dc.subjectMediaen_US
dc.subjectMoral panicsen_US
dc.subjectRemediationen_US
dc.subjectSouth Africaen_US
dc.subjectXenophobiaen_US
dc.subjectZimbabween_US
dc.title'Foreigners are stealing our birth right': Moral panics and the discursive construction of Zimbabwean immigrants in South African mediaen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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