Shaping of the Public Discourse on Refugees in Social Media: "Refugees Welcome Lithuania"

Abstract

Social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are starting to become places, where people present and evaluate various events in the world: terrorist attacks in London, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels. What is more, these websites influence values of their users and readers. Technologies allow people to exchange views at the very moment of the event. The time zone, area, or other physical aspects of the platform participants do not matter. However, this ability might cause negative impact on the discussed social groups. The aim of this article – to analyse the discourse formation in media regarding refugees’ integration and humanitarian crisis in Europe. The goals of this study are: to figure out how the practices of public participation evidences in the context of communication through social media; to form a methodology according to up-to-date communicational concepts and analyse how the images of refugees are formed in social media; to reveal the main actors, involved in the formation of the discourse on refugees in Lithuania, by analysing the content in Facebook pages “Priimsiu pabėgėlį” (eng. “Refugees Welcome”) and “Visuomeninis komitetas prieš priverstinę imigraciją” (eng. “Public Committee against Forced Immigration”).

Nomadism as a Way of Being of the Immigrants and Internally Displaced Persons

“…Actors of nomadic practices translate images of other cultures in the home world, motivate to elaborating strategies of tolerance, hospitality of the accepting world, cultural recognition. But the review of the research literature, for example, [9,12,14] doesn't allow to state confidently that nomadic practices inevitably favor harmonization of inter-cultural communication and social consent. The proof of this hypothesis and theoretical reflection on the question: "under what conditions nomadic practices favor the development of tolerance and not xenophobia" depends on further empirical studies.…”

Urban Arrival Infrastructures between Political and Humanitarian Support: The ‘Refugee Welcome’ Mo(ve)ment Revisited

“…A growing body of (predominantly German) scholarly discussion has emerged in recent years reflecting on the summer of 2015, the motives of the volunteers to engage (Frykman & Mäkelä, 2019;Hamann & Karakayali, 2016;Karakayali & Kleist, 2015, the structure and the mode of organization of the initiatives that emerged (Karakayali & Kleist, 2015, as well as the use of ICT and social media to communicate, organize and create networks (Koca, 2016;Sutkutė, 2019). Furthermore, scholars have elaborated on the chances and possibilities these spaces and moments opened up to enact alternatives to the usual procedure of institutionalized professional asylum reception.…”