Online visual activism in the #FeesMustFall university protests (2015-2016)

Abstract

In October 2015, students from the University of Witswatersrand (WITS) engaged in passionate protest after an announcement that university fees were set to increase by 10.5% in the following year. Nearly concurrently, students from the University of Cape Town (UCT) gathered to demand the felling of the statue of Cecil Rhodes. Both protests, termed Fees Must Fall and Rhodes Must Fall respectively, saw the spread of visually striking images, spread by the activists, news stations and spectators to the events on social media sites. My dissertation explores the role of visual activism from the Fees Must Fall movement with a focus on how the protest imagery both characterised and motivated spectators to side with the cause. With the American hashtag movement Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall as comparative case studies, I investigate the iconography of the movements, focussing on the use of the clenched fist gesture, images of pain and suffering, as well as transformation portraiture. I further explore the online dimension of the sharing of visual activism images and speculate as to how social networking sites encourage political activists to engage in affective arguments through their visual communication.