Transversal Polarised Discourse About “Immigration” Through Multiple Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube

Social Representations, Social Identity, and Representational Imputation

“…For instance, regarding an object such as immigration, through communication and exposure to diverse sources of information such as social media, different groups can construct and share a SR which may encompass different beliefs depending on their values and ideology. Right-wing people may then perceive immigration as a threat, while left-wing people can perceive immigration as a right for people who need asylum and protection (de Rosa et al., 2020, 2021).…”

Mirrored Social Representations of Canadian Caseworkers with Migratory Paths Intervening with Refugees in the Host Country

“…It should be noted that these opposing and only apparently contradictory images of the refugees by the caseworkers do not reflect the polarized views of immigrants widely circulating in society and media [51,52]-namely, their depiction as "victims" or "invaders" corresponding to politicized views of the "other" as a "useful resource" or as a "threat" to the host country. In the case of the caseworkers interviewed in this study, the different anchoring of the representations was not driven by exclusion processes of "othering," but by the empathy-informed wish to recognize in the refugees the vulnerability of forcibly displaced people or the resilience and strength to face tragic human conditions and overcome difficulties with an exceptional capacity of adaptation.…”

“…Those representations are highly dependent on the echo-chamber effect in the media, created by the discursive social positioning of the political leaders and governments, orienting their inclusive or exclusionary policies towards the immigrants. Results from de Rosa's wide research program based on field and media studies on social representations [44,49,52,[86][87][88][89][90] "show how the multiple denominations of migrants-also corresponding to different legal status (refugee, immigrants, stateless, newcomer, alien, undocumented, asylum-seeker) are often merged in the discourse 'for' and 'by' lay people in polarised representations of the immigrants as 'unknown', 'foreign' often associated in a one-sided manner with concepts such as 'dangerous', 'extraneous' and generally presented in the media as 'invaders,' even stigmatised as 'criminal' or potential 'terrorists'legitimising 'fear' and evoking the 'need for barriers' and protection of one's own territory by the population of the host country. From the other side, however, they are viewed as 'forced new home seekers' and social victims" [44].…”

“…Future developments in this study may overcome some of the limitations of the present investigation by (a) Increasing the number of research participants to make comparisons between subgroups of caseworkers, depending on their higher or lower affinity in terms of the geo-cultural area of origin of their own migratory experience, spoken language, previous work experience and age compared with their target group of refugees; (b) Increasing the number of professionals to be interviewed, depending on their professional involvement with the refugees' relocation, also including native Canadian caseworkers with no personal migratory experience to be compared with the research participants with a migration background interviewed in this study; (c) Comparing institutional policies towards migrants and refugees in different Western countries with different exposure to migratory flows, for example, by comparing the Canadian policies for the integration of immigrants and refugees with those adopted in the USA under presidents of different political orientations or with those adopted at a supranational level by the European Commission and by different EU member states in Europe exposed to different routes of migratory flows through the Mediterranean Sea or the Balkan routes (45,52,53,(87)(88)(89)(90)(91). (d) Conducting a longitudinal study to explore:…”