Investigating the representation of migrants in the UK and Italian press

Abstract

This paper is a cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse study of the representation of migrants in the Italian and UK press and it adopts a two-stage methodological approach. In the first phase, the number of references to nationalities which collocate with refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, migrants (and Italian equivalents) are calculated and this information is subsequently used to identify any 'mismatch' between the amount of attention that migrants from a given country receive in the media and the official population estimates. In the second, and most extensive stage, the representations of the foregrounded nationalities are analysed through the moral panic framework. Results show an extensive negative representation of some groups, but there is no evidence of a fully iterated moral panic relating to any of the nationalities investigated.

The 2017 Rohingya Crisis: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Representation in The Daily Star

“…Significant cross-country research has compared how coverage differs by location [25], [27], [28]. Studies have also found that voice is mostly given to politicians while RAS voices are absent; this disempowers RAS by removing their agency [14], [29], [30].…”

“…Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) has been used to study discourse on RASIM in fundamental works [12], [36], [37], as well as recent ones [27], [38]- [40].…”

Using a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) Approach to Investigate Constructions of Identities in Media Reporting Surrounding Mega Sports Events: The Case of the London Olympics 2012

“…Alongside frequency or keyword lists, CADS researchers interrogate the data in a variety of ways, for example, by close reading, watching or listening to its subsets (Partington et al, 2013, p. 12). In most cases, the studied phenomenon is further contextualised by considering and examining its social, political or historical context (Partington, 2014;Taylor, 2014). In contrast to general corpus research, CADS researchers prioritise a comparative approach.…”

“…The CADS approach has been successfully used to study a variety of discourses including discourse of science in the British press (Taylor, 2010), the discourse of morality also in the British press (Marchi, 2010), nationalism and language ideologies in the Canadian context (Vessey, 2013), the representations of Islam in the British media (Baker et al, 2013) and the portrait of immigrants in the British and Italian press (Taylor, 2014). Representations of specific events have not thus far been examined by using this methodology.…”

Digital Propaganda: The Tyranny of Ignorance

“…However, in the case of Britain First, there is evidence of multiple instances of deceptive propaganda which utilise negative and inaccurate stereotypes of immigrants and Muslims in order to promote Britain First as a group, and in order to perpetuate the racist ideology which the organisation expounds. These intersect with narratives surrounding social security claimants in a manner which also reflects wider discourses on these topics propounded by the right-wing tabloid press and more mainstream political parties (Bhatia, 2014, Taylor, 2014, Harkins and Lugo-Ocando, 2015. From the meme's eye view, these memes are replicating within a society replete with other memes which also attack such groups.…”