Abstract
Socio-political movements are an important vehicle for the subalterns to access de-mocracy through communicative practices, such as protests and demonstrations, and they are used as an avenue to hold power accountable. This study was multifaceted in its approach: to analyse how socio-political movements are formed to negotiate communication to power on behalf of the marginalised and to critically analyse the manner in which the South African online news media frame socio-political movements. Therefore, the use of a qualitative triangulation – qualitative content analysis and open-ended interviews – was necessary. The study argues that the public sphere in its current nature is not inclusive and that its reconfiguration as part of participatory democracy is important to incorporate marginalised actors into political participation. It is underpinned by four theories: the public sphere and the critical political economy of the media theories. The hegemony and the relative deprivation are used as supplementary theories. News articles published on News24.com, TimesLIVE.co.za, The South African, BusinessTech and ewn.co.za between 2019 and 2022 were studied to understand the ways in which they framed Operation Dudula and Abahlali baseMjondolo. To comprehensively analyse the framing and portrayal of the movements, the study focuses on elements such as the structure of news, the use of sources and headlines, and the broad representation of the movements in the tonality of the articles. The major findings of the qualitative content analysis demonstrate that the online news media’s reportage on the two movements is highly negative. In their reports, the online news media use the violence and morality frames, which stereotypes the movements as violent in their interaction with society. The study also finds that the political economy of the media, plays a role in whose voice finds prominence in public discourse and broadly the framing and portrayal of the movements. In that regard, the voices of the ruling class dominate the discourses at the expense of movement members. The interviews revealed that social movements consider online media a vehicle to create counter-publics. The study recommends that the media consider including the voices of the subalterns in public discourse to ensure that the public sphere is inclusive. As the study shows, transforming the media is necessary to achieve the full functioning of participatory democracy, especially in the context of a country whose social divisions are a result of injustices of the past.