Ten years on: a revisit on the #FeesMustFall movement discourse on Twitter/X

The student movement of 2015, dubbed “#FeesMustFall”, was a pivotal moment in South Africa, which saw students demonstrating against for tuition fees in institutions of higher education. It was the country’s most significant post-apartheid student movement, in which Twitter/X played an important role, serving as a space for information sharing. Although the #FeesMustFall movement has been widely studied, there is still limited testing of the emotional discourse and the perceived consequences. This study sought to fill that gap by computing sentiment analysis of Twitter/X from 2015–2016 and reveal how emotional stories influenced mobilisation and public opinion on higher education reform in South Africa. A Lexicon-based (Natural Language Processing) sentiment analysis approach was utilised to assess people’s sentimentsand thefindings unveiled the role of emotions in shaping and mobilising youths, leading to the protest. For instance, 51% of the analysed tweets expressed support for the movement’s goals. These tweets reflected a strong conviction that reducing student fees is essential for improving access to higher education and addressing social inequality, particularly access to higher education. In addition, 31% of the tweets exhibited criticism of the protest. This criticism or negativity may stem from concerns about the destruction of university property during the protests, as well as the feasibility of implementing proposed changes. Only 18% of the tweets presented neutral sentiments, i.e., neither a strongly positive nor a strongly negative outcome. These tweets expressed views that were not opinionated on the demonstrations. Overall, it can be noted that the emotional dimensions of social activism in the digital age highlight the significance of emotional discourse in shaping the impact of student dissatisfaction with the higher education system in South Africa.