Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric on TikTok in the Wake of Child Deaths in South Africa in 2023

This article examines the anti-immigrant rhetoric and prejudice in a social media platform, TikTok, following the tragic deaths of two children in South Africa after allegedly consuming biscuits from a spaza shop in 2023. The theoretical framing for this article derives from symbolic interactionism and framing theory. The former provides a lens to understand how meanings and social interactions shape attitudes and behaviours, while the latter, namely Framing theory is relevant because of the selection of certain aspects of 'perceived reality' which promote a particular definition of 'a problem' and a subsequent recommendation. Thus, contextualizing incidents in particular ways (framing) become a trigger for hostility. Reflexive thematic content analysis of a purposive sample of situated discourse was used to analyse the sample of four videos on the incident involving the children that had the highest online traffic within a month of the incident. We captured attitudes and intergroup biases evident in the xenophobic rhetoric by employing inductive thematic content analysis of social media commentary on TikTok. The data revealed lingering stereotypes and assumptive logics that reinforce notions of immigrants as inherently deviant and criminal. Evidence of scapegoating and confirmation bias was common in numerous online comments. The findings suggest that the social media platform can be construed as a multi modal instrument that fosters and promotes hate speech and thus it requires forms of sanctioning and intervention that can build trust and unity across immigrant and native communities. We recommend that social media developers and platforms as political actors, use communication to steer readers away from destructive social performative behaviours and navigate towards social behaviour that is generative of compassion and care for harmonious living in South Africa.