[1] Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, E-mail: Ssimonsen@cc.au.dk
Abstract
In media discourse, journalists often need to navigate two professional values when covering migration topics: providing accurate and relevant information to audiences while simultaneously being committed to social justice. To understand how discursive practices have developed in response to this dilemma, I compare migration news discourse from two national environments—Sweden and Denmark—that represent opposite sociopolitical responses to migration. By analyzing the representations of identities of social actors inspired by Van Leeuwen (1996, 2018), the paper shows how migrant’s ethnic identities are sometimes omitted and suppressed in news content, and it identifies a range of lexical devices journalists utilize to represent actors in ways that still signify ethnicity while remaining ostensibly neutral. For example, in Denmark, ethnic labels such as “migrant”, “migrant gang” and “ghetto” constitute a common pattern, whereas in Sweden, conversely, such terms are substituted by expressions such as “new Swede”, “youth gang” and “vulnerable neighborhood”. I term this phenomenon semantic ethnification and define it as a process where ethnic identities of social actors are expressed through strategies that rely on implicit and covert connotations that denote ethnicity rather than explicit ethnic cues.
Keywords: migration, news discourse, “other” representation, social actors, ethnicity
References
Ahva, L., van Dalen, A., Hovden, J. F., Kolbeins, G.H., Löfgren Nilsson, M., Skovsgaard, M., and Väliverronen, J. (2017). “A welfare state of mind?”. Journalism Studies, 18(5), 595—613. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1249005
Ahlborg, K. (2015, September 22) “Svenskar gripna för människosmuggling”. Aftonbladet. p. 12.
Allern, S., and Blach-Ørsten, M. (2011). “The news media as a political institution”. Journalism Studies, 12(1), 92—105. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2010.511958
Ansfield, B. (2018). “Unsettling “inner city”: Liberal protestantism and the postwar origins of a keyword in urban studies”. Antipode, 50(5), 1166—1185.
Andreassen, R. (2005). Gender, Race, Sexuality and Nationality. An analysis of the Danish media’s communication about visible minorities from 1971-2004. [Doctoral dissertation] University of Toronto.
Balch, A., and Balabanova, E. (2016). “Ethics, politics and migration: Public debates on the free movement of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK, 2006–2013”. Politics, 36(1), 19–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9256.12082
Barthes, R. (1966). Introduction to the structural analysis of the narrative. Discussion Paper. University of Birmingham, UK.
Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang.
Berlingske. (2019, August 18). “Debat: Befolkningsfremskrivning”. Berlingske. Section 1, p. 39.
Billig, M. (1995), Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.
Blüdnikow, B. (2009, October 15.). De danske terrorister. Berlingske Tidende. Section 2, p. 4.
Boomgaarden, H. (2007). Framing the Others; News and ethnic prejudice. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam].
Boudana, S. (2011). “A definition of journalistic objectivity as a performance”. Media, Culture & Society, 33(3), 385–398. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443710394899
Bødker, H., and Ngomba, T. (2018). “Community repair through truce and contestation: Danish legacy print media and the Copenhagen shootings”. Journalism studies, 19(4), 579–593. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017.1386584
Chandra, K. (2013). Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics. Oxford University Press.
Cramer, K. J. (2016). The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dahlstedt, M., and Neergaard, A. (2019). “Crisis of solidarity? Changing welfare and migration regimes in Sweden”. Critical Sociology, 45(1), 121—135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920516675204
Dahl, A. S. (2006). Sweden: “Once a moral superpower, always a moral superpower?”. International Journal, 61(4), 895—908. https://doi.org/10.2307/40204222
Diaz, D. (2016, September 29) “Obama: Why I won’t say ‘Islamic terrorism’”. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/28/politics/obama-radical-islamic-terrorism-cnn-town-hall/index.html
Eberl, J. M., Meltzer, C.E., Heidenreich, T., Herrero, B., Theorin, N., Lind, F., Berganza, R., Boomgaarden, H.G., Schemer, C., and Strömbäck, J. (2018). “The European media discourse on immigration and its effects: A literature review”. Annals of the International Communication Association, 42(3), 207—223. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2018.1497452
El Refaie, E. (2001). “Metaphors we discriminate by: Naturalized themes in Austrian newspaper articles about asylum seekers”. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5(3), 352–371. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00154
Esser, F., Engesser, S., Matthes, J., and Berganza, R. (2017). “Negativity”. In: de Vreese, CH. Esser, F. and Hopmann, D.N. eds 2017. Comparing Political Journalism. Oxfordshire: Routledge. Pp. 71–91.
Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. Harlow: Longman.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. The Critical Study of Language. Harlow: Longman.
Firmstone, J. (2019). “Editorials”. In: Vos, T.P. and Hanusch F. eds 2019. The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 27—49. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118841570
Gabrielatos, C., and Baker, P. (2008). “Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: A corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press, 1996–2005”. Journal of English Linguistics, 36(1), 5–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424207311247
Gudmundson, P. (2014, October 28). 55 “no go”-zoner i Sverige”. Svenska Dagbladet. p. 4.
Guillem, S. M. (2015). “Migration discourse”. In: Tracy, K., Ilie, C. and Sandel, T. eds 2015. The international encyclopedia of language and social interaction. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pp. 1–10 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118611463/wbielsi100
Hall, S. (1980). “Encoding/decoding”. In: Hall, S. Hobson, T.D., Lowe, A. and Willis, P. eds 1980. Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972—1979. Oxfordshire: Routledge. Pp. 128—138.
Hinde, D. (2017). “In the ‘safe’ world of Swedish journalism, death threats are an everyday reality”. Index on Censorship. Retrieved February 14, 2023, from https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2017/03/safe-world-swedish-journalism-death-threats-everyday-reality/
Horsti, K. (2013). “De-ethnicized victims: Mediatized advocacy for asylum seekers”. Journalism, 14(1), 78–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884912473895
Hovden, J. F. (2020). “From wanderers to strangers. The shifting space of Scandinavian immigration debate 1970–2016”. Communications, 45(s1), 814–840. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2019-0199
Jackson, R. (2007). “Constructing enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in political and academic Discourse”. Government and Opposition, 42(3), 394–426. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00229.x
Kennedy, D. (2020, June 20). “Police may drop ‘Islamist’ term when describing terror attacks”. The Times. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-may-drop-term-islamist-when-describing-terror-attacks-7pjsf8pn7
Koller, V. (2012). “How to analyse collective identity in discourse – Textual and contextual parameters”. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 5(2), 19—38.
Knobloch-Westerwick, S., Mothes, C., and Polavin, N. (2020). “Confirmation bias, ingroup bias, and negativity bias in selective exposure to political information”. Communication Research, 47(1), 104—124. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650217719596
Masini, A., Van Aelst, P., Zerback, T., Reinemann, C., Mancini, P., Mazzoni, M., and Coen, S. (2017). “Measuring and explaining the diversity of voices and viewpoints in the news: A comparative study on the determinants of content diversity of immigration news”. Journalism Studies, 19(15), 2324—2343. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017.1343650
Nordberg, J. (2017, April 8). “Stockholm drabbat av välkänd terror. Svenska Dagbladet”. Section: Sverige Nyheter, p. 9.
Norlén, A., Johnsson, P., Sundin, M., and Skånberg, T. (2015, November 15). ”Kampen står om förortens unga“. Svenska Dagbladet. Section: Debatt, p. 6.
Pan, Z., and Kosicki, M. G. (1993). “Framing analysis: an approach to news discourse”. Political Communication, 10(1), 55—75.
Ravid, B. (2017). “Ghetto: Etymology, original definition, reality, and diffusion”. In: Goldman, W. and Trotter, J eds 2017. The Ghetto in Global History: 1500 to the Present. Oxfordshire: Routledge. Pp. 23—39.
Reisigl, M., and Wodak, R. (Eds.). (2000). The Semiotics of Racism. Approaches in Critical Discourse Analysis. Ontario: Passagen.
Reisigl, M., and Wodak, R. (Eds.). (2001). Discourse and Discrimination. Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Skovsgaard, M., Albæk, E., Bro, P., and de Vreese, C. (2012). ”Media professionals or organizational marionettes?”. In: Weaver, D.H and Willnat, L. eds 2012. The Global Journalist in the 21st Century. Oxfordshire: Routledge. Pp: 155–170.
Simonsen, S. (2020). “Bacteria, garbage, insects and pigs: Conceptual metaphors in the Ultra-Orthodox anti-military “Ḥardakim” propaganda campaign”. Journal of Language and Politics 19(6), Pp. 937—962.
Simonsen, S. (2022). ”Swedish exceptionalism and the Sars-CoV2 pandemic crisis: Representations of crisis and national identity in the public sphere”. Risks Hazards Crisis Public Policy (13), Pp. 277—295.
Sirin, C. V., Valentino, N. A., and Villalobos, J. D. (2016). “Group empathy in response to nonverbal racial/ethnic cues: A national experiment on immigration policy attitudes”. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(14), 1676—1697. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764216676246
Simmel, G. (1908). “Sociology: inquiries into the construction of social forms”. Vol. 1. In : Blasi, A.J. Jacobs, A.K and Kanjirathinkal M. eds 2009. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 601—605.
Soroka, S., Fournier, P., and Lilach, N. (2019). “Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in psychophysiological reactions to news”. In: Fiske, S.T ed 2019. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(38), Pp. 18888—18892.
Strömbäck, J., Andersson, F., and Nedlund, E. (2017). ”Invandring i medierna. Hur rapporterade Svenska tidningar åren 2010–2015?”. Stockholm: Delegationen för migrationsstudier.
Syvertsen, T., Enli, G. S., Mjøs, O. J., and Moe, H. (2014). The Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Era. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Trimithiotis, D. (2020). “The Persistence of ethnocentric framing in online news coverage of European politics”. Digital Journalism, 8(3), 404—421. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1598882
Tumber, H. and Zelizer, B. (2019). “The challenges facing journalism today”. Journalism, 20(1), 5—7. https://doi.org/10.10.1177/1464884918804736
United Nations. (n.d). “Migrants”. Retrieved February 15, 2020, from https://www.un.org/en/fight-racism/vulnerable-groups/migrants#:~:text=The%20UN%20Migration%20Agency%2C%20International,the%20person’s%20legal%20status
van Dijk, T. A. and Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. Massachusetts: Academic Press.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1987). Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk. London: Sage Publications.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and Power. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2018). “Discourse and migration”. In: Zapata-Barrero R. and Yalaz E. eds 2018. Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies New York: Springer. Pp. 227—245. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76861-8_13
Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). “The representation of social actors”. In: Caldas-Coulthard, C.T and Coulthard, M. eds 1996. Text and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis Oxfordshire: Routledge. Pp. 32—70.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and Practice: New tools for Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vliegenthart, R., Boomgaarden, H. G. and Boumans, J. W. (2011). “Changes in political news coverage: Personalization, conflict and negativity in British and Dutch newspapers”. In: Kees, B. and Voltmer, K. eds 2011. Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 92–110.
Wadley, D. (2008). “The Garden of Peace”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(3), 650—685.
Wieland-Burston, J. (2019). Archetypal and Cultural Perspectives on the Foreigner. Minorities and Monsters. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Wilson, D. and Sperber, D. (2012). Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139028370
Wodak, R., and Richardson, J. E. (Eds.). (2012). Analysing Fascist Discourse. European Fascism in Talk and Text. Oxfordshire: Routledge.
Wodak, R. (2015). The Politics of Fear. What Right-wing Discourses Mean. London: Sage.
Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2015). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (3rd ed.). London: Sage.
Zelizer, B. (1993). “Journalists as interpretive communities”. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 10(3), 219—237.