The Press Legitimisation of Politicians: The dailynews and Morgan Tsvangirai in the post 31 July 2013 election period.

Abstract

Politics is a complex game and winning the ballot is not everything. Politicians have to find strategies of keeping themselves relevant to their electorate each time they lose power. As such their portrayal by the media in general and the press in particular constructs or deconstructs them. This study therefore, seeks to look at the audience‟s reception of the dailynews’ portrayal of Morgan Tsvangirai after the 31 July 2013 elections. Fourier (2007) asserts that media texts do not have meaning but audiences attach meaning to the text. This study therefore intends to look closely at the reasons behind the framing of Morgan Tsvangirai by the dailynews and how readers respond to this. The researcher closely analyses the reception approach that the audiences of the dailynews had after reading the texts on Morgan Tsvangirai during this period. Cohen (1963) states that while the media cannot tell the public what to think, they have great impact on what the public thinks about in a given context. Hence this study seeks to look at how the production of texts in the dailynews influenced audiences‟ perception of Morgan Tsvangirai even though he had lost the 2013 July 31 elections. The study assumes that dailynews is trying to resurrect Morgan Tsvangirai‟s political life. Through the use of qualitative analysis through interviews and focus group discussions with the audiences of the dailynews through selected newspaper articles on Morgan Tsvangirai, the study attempts to assess how the readers of the dailynews decoded the meaning of the texts about Tsvangirai after his loss in the 2013 harmonized elections.