ABSTRACT

Almost 20 years after South Africa’s formal transition to a democracy, South Africans of all races were consumed by the murder trial of former Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, who shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on February 14, 2013. This article analyzes how the Times Live website in South Africa constructed identity discourse related to Oscar Pistorius, Reeva Steenkamp, and her mother, June Steenkamp, from 2013 to the conclusion of his final appeal in 2018. Drawing on theories of intersectionality and news as myth, we perform a critical discourse analysis of 208 articles to illustrate how these constructions serve primarily to reassert hegemonic discourses of gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability, but also to occasionally challenge those discourses. We found that several representations conformed to established myths: Pistorius as both the Victim and Trickster, and Reeva Steenkamp as the innocent Victim. June Steenkamp was initially constructed as The Good Mother and Victim, but news coverage later presented her as a villain because of her perceived greed. We conclude that enduring news values and economic imperatives foster editorial practices that sustain existing power relations despite efforts to transform and decolonize the newsroom.

摘要

南非正式过渡到民主国家近20年之后，所有种族的南非人都被前残奥会冠军奥斯卡·皮斯托里乌斯（Oscar Pistorius）的谋杀案所杀，后者于2013年2月14日枪杀了他的女友里瓦·斯汀坎普（Reeva Steenkamp）。本文分析了《泰晤士报》如何生活南非的网站构建了与奥斯卡·皮斯托里乌斯（Oscar Pistorius），里瓦·斯滕坎普（Reeva Steenkamp）和她的母亲朱恩·斯滕坎普（June Steenkamp）从2013年到2018年最终上诉有关的身份话语。我们以交叉性和新闻理论作为神话，对批评话语进行了分析208篇文章中的所有这些，说明了这些结构如何主要用于重新确立性别，种族，阶级，性和能力的霸权话语，但也偶尔挑战这些话语。我们发现，有几种表述符合既定的神话：皮斯托里乌斯既是受害者又是骗子，里瓦·斯汀坎普则是无辜的受害者。June Steenkamp最初以“好母亲和被害者”的身份建造，但由于她的贪婪，后来的新闻报道称她为反派。