New media clues and old journalistic habits: Representing the refugees in Romanian media (original) (raw)
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REFUGEES IN EUROPE: ROMANIAN ONLINE MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE REFUGEE'S CRISIS
Romanian Journal of Sociological Studies, 2019
The article discusses the way in which Romanian online media had covered the refugees which had entered in Europe between June 2015 and October 2016. The content analysis of the articles enclosed in the sample allowed us to identify the main perspectives (economic, geopolitical, delinquency, security, religious, ethnic, humanitarian, human rights) associated with refugees in Romanian media. The authors have attempted to identify the ways in which online media journalists in Romania have used these perspectives. The main focus of analysis was on the types of articles (opinion articles, reports, interviews), the sources used in reporting, the use of images, the type of media (newspaper, aggregate sites, TV sites). The analysis had pointed out the fact that journalists represented refugees using mainly the geopolitical, humanitarian and human rights perspectives. Also, in the case of this topic media used more photographs with refugees and less videos, drawings, graphics or maps related to them.
REPRESENTING MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES AS " OTHERS " IN THE ROMANIAN ONLINE MEDIA
The article analyzes the Romanian media's headlines coverage of the 2016 refugee crisis. The sample used in the study included all the articles identified in the online media that dealt with the refugee crisis and were published between June 2015 and October 2016. Our results showed that the vocabulary used in the headlines was very simple, without internal variations. Also, the articles included in our sample had appealed less to "primary defining terms for the situation", being as such less normative in approaching the topic of interest and more emotional in their approach to the issue.
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The public perception in Romania regarding the Syrian refugees has dramatically changed within a few months in the sense of rejecting the idea of receiving immigrants on Romanian territory. In August 2015 the polls indicated that Romanians were in favor of accepting the immigrants, while in September 2015 more than half of the respondents declared they were against receiving refugees. What kind of narrative was used by the Romanian politicians to cover the " refugee/migrant crisis " ? This study tried to establish the ways in which social media have been changing Romanian perception related to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. In this research, we have monitored discourses of xenophobia and poisonings that occurred in the Romanian social media. A few Romanian politicians have aggravated the immigrant related debate via their personal social media accounts. The former Romanian President, Traian Băsescu, was one of them. As the EU public debates on whether the refugees' quotas should be mandatory or volunteer have scaled up, the people's perception was altered immediately after the discourse about rejecting the refugees has intensified in the online environment.
In 2014, more than 200,000 refugees and migrants fled for safety across the Mediterranean Sea. Crammed into overcrowded, unsafe boats, thousands drowned, prompting the Pope to warn that the sea was becoming a mass graveyard. The early months of 2015 saw no respite. In April alone more than 1,300 people drowned. This led to a large public outcry to increase rescue operations. Throughout this period, UNHCR and other humanitarian organisations, engaged in a series of largescale media advocacy exercises, aiming at convincing European countries to do more to help. It was crucial work, setting the tone for the dramatic rise in attention to the refugee crisis that followed in the second half of 2015. But the media was far from united in its response. While some outlets joined the call for more assistance, others were unsympathetic, arguing against increasing rescue operations. To learn why, UNHCR commissioned a report by the Cardiff School of Journalism to explore what was driving media coverage in five different European countries: Spain, Italy, Germany, the UK and Sweden. Researchers combed through thousands of articles written in 2014 and early 2015, revealing a number of important findings for future media advocacy campaigns. Most importantly, they found major differences between countries, in terms of the sources journalists used (domestic politicians, foreign politicians, citizens, or NGOs), the language they employed, the reasons they gave for the rise in refugee flows, and the solutions they suggested. Germany and Sweden, for example, overwhelmingly used the terms 'refugee' or 'asylum seeker', while Italy and the UK press preferred the word 'migrant'. In Spain, the dominant term was 'immigrant'. These terms had an important impact on the tenor of each country's debate. Media also differed widely in terms of the predominant themes to their coverage. For instance, humanitarian themes were more common in Italian coverage than in British, German or Spanish press. Threat themes (such as to the welfare system, or cultural threats) were the most prevalent in Italy, Spain and Britain. Overall, the Swedish press was the most positive towards refugees and migrants, while coverage in the United Kingdom was the most negative, and the most polarised. Amongst those countries surveyed, Britain's right-wing media was uniquely aggressively in its campaigns against refugees and migrants. This report provides important insights into each country's press culture during a crucial period of agenda-setting for today's refugee and migrant crisis. It also offers invaluable insights into historical trends. What emerges is a clear message that for media work on refugees, one size does not fit all. Effective media advocacy in different European nations requires targeted, tailored campaigns, which takes into account their unique cultures and political context.
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Femicides are topics frequently covered by the media, and journalists use different frames when reporting on such lethal acts of violence against women. This chapter addresses the media coverage and framing in German online press articles of two femicides with victims of Romanian ethnicity. The research presented used as methodology thematic content analysis, along with media framing analysis. In the chapter, the results of this study are discussed, that is, the characteristics of media coverage and content related to the killings of the two Romanian women in the German press are analysed, the main frames used by the media in their reporting on the femicides are pointed out, and the extent to which journalists use in their narratives techniques of blaming the victims is examined. Moreover, the chapter investigates whether the media report the crimes against women as singular facts or address them in the broader context of social problems, and contribute, in this way, to the increase of public awareness and social responsibility towards them.
Revista românească pentru educaţie multidimensională, 2024
This study innovates the way in which digital ethnography techniques can be applied in the analysis of complex phenomena, in this case the wave of migrants and refugees at the border between Romania, Serbia, Hungary and Ukraine, in the last two years (2021-2022). Thus, we regard this paper as an example of multidimensional education for both students and practitioners of media studies that struggle to address broad, transdisciplinary topics. The present research aims to present a multidimensional approach of the manner in which journalistic materials portray people who have arrived at the border between the three states in their attempt to travel further to the countries of Western Europe. Our methods consist of non-participatory content analysis on some communication products in the mass media from Great Britain and Romania, sentiment analysis and critique of professional practice. We used digital ethnography to reveal interesting data for a comparative analysis of the way different types of migrants are portrayed in British and Romanian media. The comparative analysis was conducted by using data provided by Dchipher Analytics and ZeList Monitor, ensuring a high degree of confidence in the results.
Teorija in Praksa, 2019
The aim of this research was to find out how refugees and migrants were narratively constructed and represented in selected Croatian daily newspapers during the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016. We were interested to determine whether such people were addressed in the articles as "refugees" or "migrants", whether they were commonly portrayed as victims or as a threat, and if Croatia and the neighbouring countries were represented as a refugee-friendly or refugee-hostile country. We present the results of quantitative content analysis and narrative analysis of articles on refugees and migrants published in three of Croatia's most read daily newspapers (Jutarnji list, Večernji list and 24 sata) in different periods during the crisis.
Tripodos, 2022
The anonymity provided by social net- works offers an ideal space for those who promote the rejection of refugees to publish and expand their discriminatory discourse. This research aims to analyze the discourse of the social audience of the Spanish press with regard to refugees. In this study, we extracted and analyzed the comments written by Twitter users on news related to refugees during the month following the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (from 24 February to 24 March 2022) in the five newspapers with the largest number of followers on this social network: El País, El Mundo, ABC, eldiario.es, and La Vanguardia. We examined a total of 1,581 comments on 232 news items. Through a critical analysis of the discourse, we determined the media’s and their social audience’s stance on refugees in the context of the conflict. Additionally, on a quantitative level, we conducted a content analysis of the feedback received by the media to measure the impact generated by this type of news. The results reveal the different frames used to portray refugees, with negative frames serving as indicators of rejection and hatred. Keywords: refugees, hate speech, social networks, Twitter, media.
Tripodos, 2023
The anonymity provided by social net- works offers an ideal space for those who promote the rejection of refugees to publish and expand their discriminatory discourse. This research aims to analyze the discourse of the social audience of the Spanish press with regard to refugees. In this study, we extracted and analyzed the comments written by Twitter users on news related to refugees during the month following the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (from 24 February to 24 March 2022) in the five newspapers with the largest number of followers on this social network: El País, El Mundo, ABC, eldiario.es, and La Vanguardia. We examined a total of 1,581 comments on 232 news items. Through a critical analysis of the discourse, we determined the media’s and their social audience’s stance on refugees in the context of the conflict. Additionally, on a quantitative level, we conducted a content analysis of the feedback received by the media to measure the impact generated by this type of news. The results reveal the different frames used to portray refugees, with negative frames serving as indicators of rejection and hatred. Keywords: refugees, hate speech, social networks, Twitter, media.