Strategic Othering: Framing Lebanese Migration and Fraser's “Mistake”

Abstract

Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, has framed the mid-1970s immigration of Lebanese affected by civil war as Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's "mistake". His remarks sparked controversy in the parliament and the media. The issue became a contest of frames between the Murdoch media, which supported the Minister's "mistake" frame and argued his right to "tell the truth", and the Fairfax media, which viewed the Minister as being "racist" for "scapegoating" the Lebanese community. Along with archival documents, this article examines the context and coverage of the Minister's remarks, noting that the frames presented in the media "indexed" those adopted amongst political elites, while failing to reexamine the historical record. This case study demonstrates the power of framing and the media's tendency to accept rather than challenge frames used by those in the political contest, with the result that errors in the representation of history were never corrected. This article draws on framing theory and indexing theory and concludes that the "mistake" frame for the Lebanese feeds into narratives that serve to "other" Muslim and Arab groups, fanning fears and mobilising a discourse of Islamophobia around the exclusion of "undesirable" immigrants on the basis of "cultural fit".

Othering mechanisms and multiple positionings: Children of Thai-Belgian couples as viewed in Thailand and Belgium

“…Since the conceptual framework of "Othering" pinpoints the main categories of subordination intersecting in the lives of individuals, it helps us uncover whether, how, and to what extent children of Thai-Belgian couples are socially viewed as insiders and/or outsiders in the respective countries of their parents. The case of these young people therefore contributes to the research field of Othering in the context of migration, in which adult migrants (notably the so-called "first generation") are the usual objects of scientific inquiries (for example, Betts & Krayem 2019;Guðjónsdóttir & Loftsdóttir 2017; see also the contributions in the present Special Issue). In the second analytical step, the present article looks at in detail the "self-positioning" (Anthias 2001) of children of Thai-Belgian couples, notably their reactions and strategies to "Othering" mechanisms in which they are subjected to in their cross-border social spaces.…”

Framing Theory Application in Public Relations: The Lack of Dynamic Framing Analysis in Competitive Context

“…Framing theory was also used to analyze interdependency between media systems and political systems interprets how propaganda influences on the media particularly when the global issue involving their home countries, and examines the coverage context of politician's remarks, noting that the frames presented in the media are greatly influenced by political elites (Betts & Krayem, 2019). Besides, Framing theory was applied to examine how the media framed the discourse regarding politician, using the frame analysis to explore the overall media discourse about the politician who manipulated public opinion during the election (Kluknavská, 2015) or to explore what role does the state media play in shaping public opinion (Lan, 2017).…”

Encountering the Other

“…Scholarship on Muslims has mostly focused either on media or socio-psychology (Sayyid, 2014;. Arguments such as poor/failed integration, a parallel society, inherent violence, barbaric picture of women, extremism, and terrorism have been part of political and media debates (Kolb & Yildiz, 2019;Betts & Krayem, 2019). Whilst the phenomenal growth in ethnic and religious diversity in Western world cities has in recent years been researched and debated (Dunn, 2010a;Vertovec, 2007;Meissner & Vertovec, 2015), the notion of Otherness remains mostly an abstraction, detached from the everyday sensorial life of Muslims.…”