Visual frames of migrants and refugees in the main Western European media

Abstract

This work analyses the denotative and connotative visual framing of migrants and refugees in European media during the migration crisis in Europe in general and in the Mediterranean in particular. The main objective is to identify the differences between Germany, the country that receives the most asylum requests, and other Western Europe countries (Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom). The second goal is to detect temporal differences between the first period of the crisis (2013-2014) and the second period (2015-2017), when the conflict worsened. We content analysed a sample of 500 news photographs from 10 media outlets of five European countries. The results indicate that the most predominant visual frame represents migrants and refugees as victims. However, it was also observed that the frames depicting these individuals as a threat to Western societies are more frequent in German media, and also during the second period of the crisis.

Visual framing of migrants and refugees in Serbia’s media from 2015 until 2020

“…To znači da "vizuelni okviri, poput verbalnih, funkcionišu po principima uključivanja i isključivanja, isticanja određenih odlika na uštrb drugih" (Krstić, Milojević i Kleut, 2018: 62) i služe kao "dvogled" (Krstić, Aiello and Parry, 2020: 171) kroz koji istraživači identifikuju različite obrasce vizuelnosti i vidljivosti predmeta koji istražuju. Međutim, od svih akademskih istraživanja koja se bave medijskim okvirima, samo 17 odsto njih u fokusu ima vizuelne medijske okvire (Palacios, 2015, prema: Amores, Arcila-Calderon andStanek., 2019). Slična istraživanja primene teorije medijskog uokvirivanja u međunarodnim naučnim časopisima (Matthes, 2009) pokazuju da se vizuelni medijski sadržaj često ignoriše u ispitivanjima medijskih okvira ili se posmatra samo kao prateći element teksta, čak i kad je r eč o analizama televizijskog sadržaja.…”

La fotografía y el fotoperiodismo, un objeto de estudio emergente en la investigación en comunicación en España

“…No obstante, el interés científico por el análisis fotográfico lejos de decaer, ha sido alentado por metodologías como la del framing (Ardevol-Abreu, 2015) entre cuyas investigaciones destacadas se sitúa "Visually framing the invasion and occupation of Iraq in Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report" (Schwalbe, 2013) que sirvió de inspiración del estudio realizado en España "Análisis de contenido de la representación fotográfica de la crisis de los refugiados sirios y su incidencia en el framing visual" (Del Ramo, 2016) y otros estudios más recientes como el publicado sobre los refugiados en la prensa europea (Amores et al, 2019).…”

A Visual Framing Analysis of COVID-19 Pandemic outbreak in India on Washington Post, India Today, and BBC :Global Journalism in news photographs

“…Messaris and Abraham (2001) believe that when there is a confrontation between a photograph and text, the image usually wins, since it usually seems nearer the truth. Given the iconic nature of photography, spectators tend to ignore the possibility that the photograph can also be an artificial construction that emphasizes certain elements over others, by using multiple formal and rhetorical resources, such as the framing of the photograph, its selection, cropping, staging or digital retouching, all of which imbue the image with a symbolic and ideological character (Amores, J. J., et al, 2019).…”