Solidarity In The Media And Public Contention Over Refugees In Europe

This book examines the ‘European refugee crisis’, offering an in-depth comparative analysis of how public attitudes towards refugees and humanitarian dispositions are shaped by political news coverage. An international team of authors address the role of the media in contesting solidarity towards refugees from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research. The book is of particular interest for scholars who are interested in the fields of European solidarity, migration and refugees, contentious politics, while providing an approach that talks to scholars of journalism and political communication studies, as well as digital journalism and online news reception. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Media have played an important role in framing the public debate on the “refugee crisis” that peaked in autumn of 2015. This report examines the narratives developed by print media in eight European countries and how they contributed to the public perception of the “crisis”, shifting from careful tolerance over the summer, to an outpouring of solidarity and humanitarianism in September 2015, and to a securitisation of the debate and a narrative of fear in November 2015. Overall, there has been limited opportunity in mainstream media coverage for refugees and migrants to give their views on events, and little attention paid to the individuals’ plight or the global and historical context of their displacement. Refugees and migrants are often portrayed as an undistinguishable group of anonymous and unskilled outsiders who are either vulnerable or dangerous. The dissemination of biased or ill-founded information contributes to perpetuating stereotypes and creating an unfavourable environment not only for the reception of refugees but also for the longer-term perspectives of societal integration.

The unprecedented arrival of more than a million refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants – plus the political, public, and policy reactions to it – is redefining Europe. The repercussions will last for generations on such central issues as security, national identity, human rights, and the very structure of liberal democracies. What is the role of the news media in telling the story of the 2010s refugee crisis at a time of deepening crisis for journalism, as “fake news” ran rampant amid an increasingly distrustful public? This volume offers students, scholars, and the general reader original research and candid frontline insights to understand the intersecting influences of journalistic practices, news discourses, public opinion, and policymaking on one of the most polarizing issues of our time. Focusing on current events in Greece, Austria, and Germany – critical entry and destination countries – it introduces a groundbreaking dialogue between elite national and international media, academic institutions, and civil society organizations, revealing the complex impacts of the news media on the thorny sociopolitical dilemmas raised by the integration of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in EU countries.

This book examines the ‘European refugee crisis’, offering an in-depth comparative analysis of how public attitudes towards refugees and humanitarian dispositions are shaped by political news coverage. An international team of authors address the role of the media in contesting solidarity towards refugees from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research. The book is of particular interest for scholars who are interested in the fields of European solidarity, migration and refugees, contentious politics, while providing an approach that talks to scholars of journalism and political communication studies, as well as digital journalism and online news reception.

This book looks at how Europe's refugee crisis has provoked different political and humanitarian responses, all similarly driven by technology. The author first explores the transformation of Europe into an increasingly militarised space, where technologies are mainly used to exercise surveillance and to distinguish between citizens and unwanted migrants. She then shifts the attention to refugees' practices of connectivity by looking at how technologies are used by refugees to communicate, perform and resist their exile. Finally, the book examines the opportunities and challenges that characterise the impact of digital social innovation in humanitarian settings. By focusing on how technologies are used to promote solidarity in crisis contexts, the volume provides an original contribution to studying the role of tech for good activism within the space of Fortress Europe. Based on interviews with refugees, digital humanitarians and social entrepreneurs, the book timely questions what Europe means today, and why dialogue is now more important than ever. Sara Marino is Senior Lecturer in Communications and Media at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK. She is the author of L'ebbrezza del potere: Vittime e persecutori (2009), editor of Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Trajectories on Pluralism, Inclusion and Citizenship (2014) and co-editor of Fortress Europe: Media, Migration and Borders (with Simon Dawes, 2016). She serves as Editorial Board Member for the Media Theory journal.

Citizens’ Solidarity in Europe systematically dissects the manifestations of solidarity buried beneath the official policies and measures of public authority in Europe. In this exciting and innovative book, contributors offer comprehensive and original data and highlight the detrimental factors that tend to inhibit or annihilate solidarity, and those that are beneficial for the nurturing of solidarity.

This is both the first systematic introduction to Discourse Studies for students and scholars of social movements and a study of discourses on the European “refugee crisis”, by leading theorist, Teun A. van Dijk. Concrete examples of different kinds of discourse are vital for the study of social movements because their activities are not limited to such well-known forms of contention as marches, occupations or strikes, but also daily discursive activities, such as meetings, assemblies, interviews, press conferences, manifestos, pamphlets, banners, graffiti, websites, blogs, social media posts and everyday talk.This book proposes that empirical analyses of these discourses should go beyond the popular but vague notion of “frame”and engage in more detailed and explicit analyses of the text and talk of social movements. This is a much-needed introduction to the most important structures of discourse and a detailed theoretical account of the notion of “solidarity” defining the Refugees Welcome movement.

When EU member states signed the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, they did not anticipate the manifold crises in store for them over the following years. Instead of the intended consolidation of a Union which had just gone through its most profound modernisation and biggest round of enlargements, the EU has since then had to weather a wide range of political, economic, social, legal, health and even military crises with major repercussions within and beyond its own territory. Indeed, this time of polycrisis has induced change on many levels: Across the continent and its many fora of European supra-, trans- and international collaboration, established institutions, rule systems and normative frameworks have been put into question and power balances have been shifting. Against this background, actors from social, political, economic and cultural life have sought new ways to overcome the manifold pressing problems of their time, be it through intensified collaboration or attempts to increasingly resolve issues at the national level. This volume offers a compilation of case studies on EU crisis responses, covering the most impactful of the various crises the EU has had to face in recent years. It provides theoretical and conceptual guidelines for the study of political actors’ responses to crisis at all levels of the EU multilevel governance system and beyond.