Representation of Sri Lankan State University Academics in Print Media

Abstract

The undergraduates’ protests and violence within the state university system are frequently reported in Sri Lankan print media. Yet, the state university academics are a group absent in the reports until recently. This paper aimed to qualitatively examine how Sri Lankan state university academics were portrayed in four selected Sinhala print newspapers. The study focused on media coverage generated by the trade union action launched by state university academics on 9 march 2023 and employed content analysis to identify the themes and linguistic features evident in the newspaper articles. Both state-owned and privately owned newspapers appearing daily and on weekends from 9 March 2023 were taken into analysis. The main aim of the study was to explore how the state university academics in Sri Lanka are represented in the Sinhala newspapers. As a secondary aim, a linguistic analysis was conducted on the Sinhala linguistic features used in Sinhala Print media. The findings demonstrated a significant difference in the attention paid to the university academics in the two categories of newspapers, with the state-owned newspapers paying higher attention than the privately owned newspapers. Overall, the Sinhala print media demonstrated a negative view towards the state university academics, and the media depicted the academics as a destructive group of individuals who were in perpetual protest sacrificing the youth’s and the children’s future in the country and hindered the development and the future of Sri Lanka. Moreover, the press highlighted that these academics have a responsibility towards the future of the country and the children while condemning the leftist movement for persuading the academics to be a vicious group of individuals. Furthermore, Sinhala linguistic features such as metaphors and similes, rhetorical questions, code-mixing and code switching and also the omission of the verb can be noticed in this data set.

KEYWORDS: Sinhala press, State university academics, trade union action, linguistic analysis