Refugee and Asylum News Coverage in UK Print and Online Media

Abstract

The representation of asylum is important, yet there is little research of how this topic is reported online. This article addresses this gap through a study of UK print and online media (N = 2018). Articles were examined for their soft and hard news focus. Results show both partisanship and the medium play an important role. Online news covered more soft and hard news topics regardless of partisanship. However, examining the focus and style, right-leaning print and online publications focused more on criminality, while left-leaning publications focused on victimisation. These findings question the received wisdom that partisanship is the most significant variable shaping when reporting asylum. We purport that both the medium and partisanship are important to consider.

Média e migrações forçadas: representações sociais dos refugiados nos média portugueses em dois momentos mediáticos (2015 e 2019)

“…Por sua vez, o estudo de Blumell et al (2020), com base na cobertura de média online do Reino Unido, mostra que há uma sobrevalorização da criminalidade cometida pelos requerentes de asilo e uma politização deste tema: os média considerados de esquerda focam-se na vitimização, enquanto os de direita, na criminalidade. Os autores apontam a necessidade de mais soft news sobre refugiados, e não apenas hard news, para dar mais contexto, personalização e esclarecimento ao tema.…”

Transforming Disinformation on Minorities Into a Pedagogical Resource: Towards a Critical Intercultural News Literacy

“…• They are part of students' daily lives, engaging and provoking emotional responses; • If "fake news" mimic journalistic practices and "look like news," the strategies to mimic those practices can be analysed and deconstructed; • Students are exposed to racist and hateful discourses and are manipulated by the use of their preferred media outlets: Research has shown that online media tends to portray immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers more often as threats than print media does (Blumell et al, 2020).…”

Defining Adjustment to Address the Missing Link between Refugees and Their Resettlement Communities

“…As De Lemos and colleagues suggest [ 7 ], such a political debate is mediated by mass media, who play a fundamental role in the social representation of refugees. Studies in this field show that, while right wing media focus their narratives on crime and legality, left wing parties focus on refugee victimization [ 8 ]. Nowadays, the term “refugee” has assumed an emotional meaning in addition to the original institutional meaning that had the specific function of ensuring secure shelter for those displaced because of persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations.…”

“…Nowadays, the term “refugee” has assumed an emotional meaning in addition to the original institutional meaning that had the specific function of ensuring secure shelter for those displaced because of persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations. According to the narratives shared by the mass media in western countries, refugees are either people to fear or to rescue [ 8 ]. Although qualitatively different, these representations foster an image of refugees as resourceless foreigners who merely consume the host community’s resources produced by natives.…”

“…Although qualitatively different, these representations foster an image of refugees as resourceless foreigners who merely consume the host community’s resources produced by natives. (Since studies in the field have underlined the role of words and, more generally, communication play, in fostering public opinion toward immigration [ 7 , 8 ], the authors made the linguistic choice to address members of the resettlement communities as natives or autochthonous in order to specify that the main difference between them and refugees is the birth-country.) This image hinders the recognition of “refugee belongingness” to the resettlement community and the chance to identify how they actively participate in its development.…”