Abstract
The number of higher education students (HE) has significantly grown in recent decades, yet the extent to which understandings of ‘the student’ are shared nationally and globally is not clear. Existing scholarship on this topic centres on social actors within HE, but matters related to students are not confined to its circles alone – they are also discussed in mainstream media. Representation of HE students in the news media remains an under-researched area, with a notable absence of cross-national comparative analyses. This study explores how students are constructed in the news media within and across six European states: Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain. Drawing inspiration from post-structuralist discourse theory, it involves a textual analysis of 1159 news articles published between 2014-2016 in 12 different tabloid or broadsheet national newspapers. The analysis indicates that the constructions of students in the news media are multiple and complex. It reveals important commonalities in the understandings of students within and across the national contexts, while also documenting significant enduring differences between nations, and to a lesser extent, within them. These findings contest arguments about a strong convergence of understandings of HE students in Europe. I argue that what it means to be a student is represented in the news media in contingent and, at times, contradictory ways, constituted through political and ideological negotiations. These negotiations of what it means to be a student can be understood as a discursive politics of studentship in action, determining who is deemed a legitimate student, which activities are considered acceptable, and what expectations and values are placed on current and future students. This contingent and contradictory representation of studentship in the news media can have implications for the public perception of students within and beyond HE, as well as for students’ everyday lives as they navigate this discursive space.