Fear, hatred, and contempt toward rural teachers training college students

The press in a student movement

Abstract

On May 30, 2017, in the state of Aguascalientes, Mexico, a new educational policy was announced for the “Justo Sierra Méndez” Rural Teachers’ College. It stipulated a decrease in enrollment and that the boarding school would no longer be exclusively for girls. Thus, the students initiated a series of protests to overturn this mandate. This investigation is based on the idea that the press attempted to manipulate emotions of fear, hatred, and contempt in its audiences; hence, the purpose of this study is to explain how it did so. This research is a qualitative case study with a purposive sampling of 17 newspapers and 320 news articles. The articles were coded based on Jasper’s (2018) proposal. The categories considered were affective commitments and moral emotions, and their subcategories were fear, hatred, and contempt. The results show that the press can generate fear among students by equating it with a threat and reactivating xenophobic hatred for being outsiders. Fear, hatred, and contempt are managed in newspapers with articles about violent incidents perpetrated by students; they are thus dehumanized and criminalized, legitimizing the use of public force against them. Statements made to the press by powerful public figures can shape, direct, or redirect fear and hatred toward certain groups, with the exception of the contempt that has historically been cemented toward rural teacher training colleges. Studying the emotional dimension of protest makes it possible to identify the press’s ability to orient collective sentiment toward the acceptance or rejection of a protesting student group.