Villains and victors: representations of the fallists in newspapers during the 2015 university crisis

In 2015, South African university student protests drew critical attention to the state of higher education in the country. Newspaper reports of the student protests were pervasive. Reports of the violence that characterised parts of the protests dominated the news despite the students’ impact on the positive changes in higher education. Using a thematic analysis, this article interrogates student representation in newspapers from the inception of the protests to the end of the 2015 academic year. Four themes were identified: students as destructive vandals, violators of the rights of others, law-breakers, and agents of transformation. Results indicate that newspaper reports of the violence overshadowed reports of the positive changes that the student protestors catalysed, and in so doing, newspaper reports during this time delegitimised the students as agents of change