Browsing by Author "Pitt, Rebecca"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemA critical analysis of the discursive representation of homelessness in News24, District Mail and Ground Up from 2018 - 2020(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-03) Pitt, Rebecca; Mongie, Lauren; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis reports on a qualitative and quantitative study of the discursive representation of homelessness in three South African news media publications, District Mail, News24, and Ground Up between 2018 and 2020 through the analytical lens of van Dijk’s (1993) sociocognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The aim of the study was to analyse the role that the news media play in constructing attitudes toward vulnerable groups, like homeless people, as the ways in which such groups are constructed in public discourses typically (re)produces dominant ideologies and public stigma that marginalises the groups by allowing for unfair government policies to be passed that keeps them at the outskirts of society. This research also made use of Braun and Clarke’s (2012) approach to Thematic Analysis (TA) in order to establish the main themes that were found in news items that either sustained stereotypes and stigmas about the group, or challenged them. In addition, it also drew upon Scollon’s (1997) theory of attribution in order to explore how the local news media either gave a voice to the homeless community or silenced them. The study’s findings identified five thematic representations across the news publications, namely ‘A war against the homeless’; ‘A neighbourhood nuisance’; ‘Homelessness does not discriminate’; ‘The homeless are idle’; and ‘Ambitious and determined’. Findings also revealed that in anti-homeless publications, stigmas about the group are constructed through discourse that characterises homeless people as being unclean and dangerous substance abusers that are involved in criminal activity and pose a risk to public health. Additionally, the study found a strong trend of polarisation in such media representations of homeless people, typically describing in-group (non-homeless people) suffering and good actions, alongside negative outgroup (homeless people) representations, who were marked as the cause of in-group suffering due to their negative actions and characteristics. In contrast, pro-homeless publications characterised as the homeless as victims of injustice whose human rights are being violated by placing emphasis on their lack of access to basic necessities, and the failure of local municipalities to care for their homeless populations. The findings further showed that articles found in Ground Up, which reports on behalf of vulnerable communities, were significantly more pro-homeless whereas the community news publication District Mail’s corpus was largely anti-homeless in their reportage. The study concluded with a number of recommendations for journalists who wish to make their reportage on homelessness more constructive, including avoiding stereotyping; giving agency to individuals or groups who marginalise homeless people in order to show who is responsible for the group’s marginalisation; including the voices of homeless people in articles that topicalise them; and situating the problem of homelessness within the socio-economic context of poverty, unemployment, and a lack of appropriate government support instead of attributing it to personal shortcomings and poor decision making.