Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I subject a collection of op-eds that discusses homosexuality in leading Ugandan newspapers to textual and content analysis to uncover the image of gay subjectivity that has emerged in the last 10 years.

Paper long abstract:

Leading scholars of media and public discourses such as Nancy Frazer (1992) and Michael Warner (2002) have variously contested the idea that the media is a disinterested and dispassionate participant in public debates. They argue that the media cannot be neutral when the issue under debate is about polarising and explosive subjects such as sexuality, race, and gender because media gatekeepers such as editors, commentators and columnists often coalescence around an issue in a highly subjective manner to buttress the interlocutor's biases. I apply Frazer's and Warner's point that public discourses in the media are engendered to particular ideological standpoints and that institutions like the media mobilise logic, reason, intellect, and experience to advance particular points of view in respect to a topical issue to the framing of homosexuality in Ugandan media in the last decade. Hypothesising that op-ed sections of the Ugandan newspapers are platforms at which different public intellectuals debate important issues in society such as the purported danger of homosexuality to Ugandan children and way of life, I subject a collection of op-eds that discusses homosexuality in leading Ugandan newspapers — Daily Monitor, The Observer and The Independent — to textual and content analysis of the image of gay subjectivity that has emerged from these analyses since 2009 when homosexuality morphed into a topical issue in the country. I argue that the image of homosexuals that are constructed and circulated as either pitiable pariahs or pompous perverts fails in accurately delineating who is a Ugandan homosexual.