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The ‘Evil East’ Vs The ‘Welcoming West’? The Media Representation of Europe’s East- West Divide, In Relation to the Refugee Crisis

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Leah Rachel Robertson Mair

The ‘Evil East’ Vs The ‘Welcoming West’? The Media

Representation of Europe’s East- West Divide, In Relation to the

Refugee Crisis

Department of European Studies

MA East European Studies

Supervisor: Chiara De Cesari

1 July 2016

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ARTICLES OF EXAMINATION 2

INTRODUCTION 7

CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 13

CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY 20

CHAPTER THREE: RESULTS 33

CHAPTER FOUR: MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF EASTERN EUROPE MADE

VIA THE REFUGEE CRISIS 36

CHAPTER FIVE: TROPES USED TO REPRESENT REFUGEES IN EUROPEAN

MEDIA REPORTINGS 50

CONCLUSION 60

APPENDIX 64

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ARTICLES OF EXAMINATION

GERMANY

Deutsch Welle Akademie

Author Unknown, ‘Orban plans to build fence on Hungary's border with Croatia’, http://www.dw.com/en/orban-plans-to-build-fence-on-hungarys-border-with-croatia/a-18719080, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

Jessie Wingard, ‘'Islamic rape of Europe': Polish magazine sparks outrage’,

http://www.dw.com/en/islamic-rape-of-europe-polish-magazine-sparks-outrage/a-19056162, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘Hungarian TV journalist fired for violence toward fleeing migrants’, http://www.dw.com/en/hungarian-tv-journalist-fired-for-violence-toward-fleeing-migrants/a-18703130, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

Andreas Becker, ‘The costs of the refugee crisis’, http://www.dw.com/en/the-costs-of-the-refugee-crisis/a-19016394, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

Bild

K Diekmann, H-J Vehlewald and D Biskup, ‘BILD INTERVIEW WITH HUNGARY’S PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR ORBÁN: “The voices coming from Berlin

are coarse, rough, aggressive”’, http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/viktor-orban/der-ton-aus-deutschland-ist-schroff-grob-aggressiv-44701954.bild.html, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

‘Polish Minister Defends Media Law’. http://www.bild.de/bildlive/2016/14-polen-minister-44000764.bild.html, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Emilio Rappold, ‘CAMERAWOMAN KICKED HIM: What happened to Osama Abdul Mohsen?’ http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/fluechtlingskrise/wie-geht-es-fluechtling-osama-mohsen-ungarn-kamerafrau-43872244.bild.html, [Accessed: 21/05/2016]. Julian Reichelt, ‘COMMENTARY: Christmas in the year of the refugee crisis’,

http://www.bild.de/politik/inland/fluechtlingskrise-in-deutschland/christmas-in-the-year-of-the-refugee-crisis-43926416.bild.html [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

Der Spiegel

Jan Puhl, ‘Fortress Hungary: Orbán Profits from the Refugees’,

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/viktor-orban-wants-to-keep-muslim-immigrants-out-of-hungary-a-1052568.html, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

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Author Unknown, ‘"Islamic rape of Europe": International Reactions to Polish magazine cover’ http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/w-sieci-aufregung-um-polnisches-magazin-cover-a-1078288.html, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

Ralf Hoppe, ‘Refugee Trail Fame: A Trip, a Fall and a Whole New Life’

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/syrian-refugee-kicked-in-hungary-starts-a-new-life-in-spain-a-1070739.html, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘New Fences on the Old Continent: Refugee Crisis Pushes Europe to the Brink’, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/border-closures-spell-refugee-back-up-in-greece-a-1080643.html, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

UNITED KINGDOM

The Guardian

Patrick Kingsley, ‘Migrants on Hungary's border fence: 'This wall, we will not accept it'’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/22/migrants-hungary-border-fence-wall-serbia, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

Harriet Sherwood, ‘Polish magazine's “Islamic rape of Europe” cover sparks outrage’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/18/polish-magazines-islamic-of-europe-cover-sparks-outrage, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

Daniel Nolan, ‘Hungarian nationalist TV camera operator filmed kicking refugee children’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/08/hungarian-nationalist-tv-camera-operator-filmed-kicking-refugee-children, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

Kate Connolly, ‘Refugee crisis: Germany creaks under strain of open door policy’,

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/08/refugee-crisis-germany-creaks-under-strain-of-open-door-policy [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

The Telegraph

Daniel Nolan, ‘Hungary orders 100-mile Serbia border fence to keep out migrants’,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/11680840/Hungary-orders-100-mile-Serbia-border-fence-to-keep-out-migrants.html, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

Peter Foster and Matthew Day, ‘Polish journalists lash out at new “purge culture” in state media’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/29/polish-journalists-lash-out-at-new-purge-culture-in-state-media/, [Accessed: 21/05/2016].

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Josie Ensor, ‘Hungarian TV camerawoman fired for tripping Syrian migrants’,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/11852447/Hungarian-TV-camerawoman-fired-for-kicking-Syrian-migrants.html, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

Suzanne Evans, ‘Refugee crisis: Britain must be cruel to be kind’,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/12120550/Refugee-crisis-Britain-must-be-cruel-to-be-kind.html. [Accessed: 20/05/2015].

The Sun

Nick Pisa, Neil Syson, Jonathan Reilly, ‘Iron curtain II: Europe split by migrant crisis as EU “Cold War” fences go up’, http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6653076/Iron-curtain-b-classredIIb.html, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

Katie Earlam, Tom Wells, Lucy Pasha-Robinson, ‘Pole Chancers’,

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6989483/Polish-migrants-get-guide-to-raking-in-benefits.html, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘Camerawoman sacked for refugee trip’,

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6629545/Camerawoman-sacked-for-refugee-trip.html, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

Harry Cole, ‘EU bungled its response to the refugee crisis and increased the threat of terrorism, says report’, http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6933348/EU- bungled-its-response-to-the-refugee-crisis-and-increased-the-threat-of-terrorism-says-report.html, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

HUNGARY

The Budapest Business Journal

Hungary wall - Christian Keszthelyi, ‘Poll shows opposition to border fence, concern for refugees’, http://bbj.hu/politics/poll-shows-opposition-to-border-fence-concern-for-refugees_104393, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

Anikó Fenyvesi, ‘Report: Handling of refugee crisis could prove volatile for the region’ http://bbj.hu/politics/report-handling-of-refugee-crisis-could-prove-volatile-for-the-region_112463, [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘Camerawoman for far-right site recorded attacking refugees’

http://bbj.hu/politics/camerawoman-for-far-right-site-recorded-attacking-refugees_103756 [Accessed: 20/05/2016].

BBJ, ‘Hungary cannot accept returned migrants’, http://bbj.hu/politics/spokesperson-hungary-cannot-accept-returned-migrants_109891, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

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Blikk

Author Unknown, ‘Closing of borders! The Hungarian-Romanian section of the fence’, http://www.blikk.hu/aktualis/belfold/hatarzar-a-magyar-roman-szakaszon-is-johet-a-kerites/6m676sr, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘Orban’s popularity and the refugee crisis’,

http://www.blikk.hu/aktualis/kulfold/orban-nepszerusegenek-jot-tett-a-menekultvalsag/gn0q5j5, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

David Szirmay, ‘Why Children, Petra?’, http://www.blikk.hu/aktualis/politika/miert-rugdosol-gyerekeket-petra/b74s4vh, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘Tens of Thousands of Refugees trapped in Greece’,

http://www.blikk.hu/aktualis/kulfold/menekultek-tizezrei-rekedtek-gorogorszagban/jqf1wpd, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Daily News Hungary

Daily News, ‘Government: Border Fence Construction Cannot Be Delayed’,

http://dailynewshungary.com/government-border-fence-construction-cannot-be-delayed/ [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Daily News, ‘Hungary Supports Poland against “unacceptable” attacks’,

http://dailynewshungary.com/szijjarto-hungary-supports-poland-against-unacceptable-attacks/, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

Andras Horvath, ‘Blood Price on the Head of Petra Laszlo who Kicked Immigrants’, http://dailynewshungary.com/blood-price-on-the-head-of-petra-laszlo-who-kicked-immigrants/, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Andras Horvath, ‘Europe Facing Mass Migration, Not Refugee Crisis’,

http://dailynewshungary.com/szijjarto-europe-facing-mass-migration-not-refugee-crisis/, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

POLAND

Lodz Post

Author Unknown, ‘Ewa Kopacz met with Crisis Management Team to discuss refugees’, http://lodzpost.com/polishnews/ewa-kopacz-met-with-crisis-management-team-to-discuss-refugees/, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘“Refugees are Welcome” Demonstration to be held in Warsaw’,

http://lodzpost.com/polishnews/refugees-are-welcome-demonstration-to-be-held-in-warsaw-12-09-15/, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

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Author Unknown, ‘Poland demands EU security guarantees if it is to host refugees’, http://lodzpost.com/polishnews/poland-demands-eu-security-guarantees-if-it-is-to-host-refugees/, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘Poland agrees to accept an additional 5000 refugees’,

http://lodzpost.com/polishnews/poland-agrees-to-accept-an-additional-5000-refugees/, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

The Warsaw Voice

Author Unknown, ‘Poles divided over refugee crisis’,

http://www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/33000/news, [Accessed: 22/05/2016]. Author Unknown, ‘Poland not ready for refugee crisis’,

http://www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/32931/news, [Accessed: 22/05/2016]. Author Unknown, ‘PM: Poland won't accept refugees after Brussels attacks’,

http://www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/34941/news, [Accessed: 20/05/2016]. Author Unknown, ‘Poland opposes EU solution to refugee problem’,

http://www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/35344/news, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

New Poland Express.

Author Unknown, ‘Poland refuses refugees’,

http://www.newpolandexpress.pl/polish_news_story-7312-poland_refuses_refugees.php, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘Times Up?’, http://www.newpolandexpress.pl/polish_news_story-7436-times_up_for_ewa_kopacz.php, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘True Colours’, http://www.newpolandexpress.pl/polish_news_story-7427-true_colours.php, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

Author Unknown, ‘Refugee debate hits the streets’,

http://www.newpolandexpress.pl/polish_news_story-7435-refugee_debate_hits_the_streets.php, [Accessed: 22/05/2016].

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INTRODUCTION

Fig. 1: Nilüfer Demir, Alan Kurdi lies in the surf near Bodrum, Turkey, 2015.

On 4 September 2015, the image of deceased Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi, lying face down in the surf on a Turkish beach, moved millions to finally register the magnitude of Europe’s refugee crisis. By the time Alan’s body washed ashore over 300,000 people had already risked everything to cross the Mediterranean. Over 2,600 had perished in the attempt.1 NGOs and charities across the world had been publicising the crisis, and many had devoted their lives to rehousing refugees prior to September 2015, but for much of the world’s population it took the media’s interest in the above picture, and their plastering of it across the press, to bring the disaster to light. Within twelve hours of its taking, Alan’s picture appeared on twenty million screens across the globe and reconstructed the European migration debate.2 Bear witness, the power of the media.

Whilst Europe faces the greatest refugee crisis since World War Two and the European Union (EU) is in turbulent times, the media stirs the pot. Rather than prompting a much needed sober debate on how to respond to the problem, Western European media reports 1 William Spindler, ‘2015: The Year of Europe’s Refugee Crisis’ http://tracks.unhcr.org/2015/12/2015-the-year-of-europes-refugee-crisis/ [Accessed: 11/03/2016].

2 The Guardian Press Association, ‘Alan Kurdi image appeared on 20m screens in just 12 hours’

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/15/alan-kurdi-image-appeared-on-20m-screens-in-just-12-hours [Accessed: 2/02/2016].

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have tended to discuss the migration debate through an egoistic rhetoric; the contention that the increased presence of asylum seekers is highlighting the fact that Europe is divided between a compassionate, welcoming, civilised West and a racist, selfish, primitive East.3 This belief has been internalised by many Western Europeans but the discussion is

paradoxical. Western European journalists have persistently stereotyped Hungarians as racist thugs, using Viktor Orban’s language as evidence. Yet Geert Wilders’ use of the phrase ‘Islamic invasion’ when discussing migration in the Netherlands’ parliament did not tarnish the reputation of Dutch citizens.4 Jan T Gross, Professor of History at Princeton University, recently typecast Eastern Europeans as ‘intolerant, illiberal, xenophobic’ beings with no sense of shame.5 He attributed this to the fact that, unlike Western Europe, Eastern Europe has ‘yet to come to terms with its murderous past’.6 Having only overthrown the Soviets a quarter of a century ago, he suggested Eastern Europeans are new to the values of liberal democracy. The way in which the professor framed Eastern Europeans’ lack of generosity towards refugees as evidence of a fundamental political and cultural gap is representative of the tone of much media coverage in Western Europe.7

This thesis will explore the role of media representations in producing Eastern and Western European categories, and creating Eastern Europe as a homogenous whole, as a precursor to demonising it. The thesis will analyse Western media representations of Eastern Europe via specific incidents which have most compellingly contributed to the construction of an unedifying Eastern Europe. Moreover, it will assess the putative divide between the inhospitable Eastern Europe and welcoming Western Europe. The main events chosen for analysis have sparked debate, and led to assumptions, generalisations and comparisons regarding not simply how refugees are treated in East and West, but also the politics and attitudes of the average Eastern European citizen. The occurrences include the Hungarian government’s building of a wall to keep out refugees, the Hungarian Nationalist TV camera 3 ‘Europe seems to have split into the “compassionate” west and “selfish” east. That, at least, is the overriding media narrative in the west.’ See Marcin Zaborowski, ‘Why eastern Europe’s resistance to refugee quotas is not “selfish” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/16/eastern-european-migrants-refugees-selfish [Accessed: 15/05/2016].

4Yoruk Bahceli, ‘Wilders tells Dutch parliament refugee crisis is “Islamic invasion”’

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-netherlands-idUSKCN0RA0WY20150910 [Accessed: 04/-5/2016].

5 Jan T Gross, ‘Eastern Europe’s Crisis of Shame’, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/eastern-europe-refugee-crisis-xenophobia-by-jan-gross-2015-09?barrier=true [Accessed: 15/05/2016].

6 Ibid.

7 Kenan Malik, ‘Is Eastern Europe Really More Racist Than The West?’,

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operator Petra László’s assaulting of refugees, and Polish Magazine wSieci’s shocking cover entitled ‘The Islamic Rape of Europe’, which racially attacked refugees. All three incidents rightfully brought about outrage in Western Europe, but wrongfully were used by journalists to stereotype and vilify their Eastern counterparts. The result of this categorising has been an intensification of the gulf between Eastern and Western Europe, and increased backing of the belief that the East/West divide is black and white. In fact, the image of the refugee gets dishonourably confused with the terrorist in the West, just as it stimulates empathy in the East. This will be demonstrated as the thesis goes on to highlight the parallel use of similar tropes, such as the unarmed innocent and the unwanted invader, i.e. terrorist, in both Eastern and Western media representations. Through this analysis, the thesis will stand to point out the hypocritical, unjust and detrimental nature of the generalisations made in Western

European press regarding Eastern Europe, as well as the obvious irony in demonising Eastern Europeans for their own demonising of migrants.

This thesis is warranted because there is relatively limited scholarly work available on how media representations of the refugee crisis are affecting Europe’s East/West divide. Most of the studies regarding the migration debate have tended to discuss solely the language used by the press, or the problems with EU policies. This study is important because stereotyping in the media is the often overlooked negative aspect of a globalised world, and media freedom is one of the important issues du jour. Last year, Freedom House reported that only fourteen percent of the world’s population had access to free media, the lowest percentage seen in ten years.8 The steep decline links to recent restrictions on the rights of journalists to physically access and report freely from protest sites and conflict areas, many of which relate to the refugee crisis.9 Finally, this report is relevant because the refugee crisis and its implications for the media are not going to expire any time soon: in November 2015 the EU predicted that three million migrants could arrive in the 28-nation bloc by the end of 2016.10

8 Jennifer Dunham, Bret Nelson, and Elen Aghekyan, ‘Harsh Laws and Violence Drive Global Decline’, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press-2015/harsh-laws-and-violence-drive-global-decline, [Accessed: 12/04/2016].

9 Ibid.

10 Lorne Cook, ‘EU predicts 3 million migrants could arrive by end 2016’,

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3f19f30f81784982a74900bda8d5e732/eu-predicts-3-million-more-migrants-could-arrive-end-2016, [Accessed: 11/04/2016].

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Historical Context of Eastern Stereotyping

The perception that the Western world is culturally superior and more civilised than the East is not a new fathom. Eastern Europeans have long been depicted as primitive, thuggish Neanderthals, a tradition personified by the character of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, and realised by the butt of most Polak jokes.11 Edward Said’s Orientalism proclaimed in 1978 that Western writers had for centuries been adopting a condescending tone when discussing Easterners.12 According to Said's analysis, Western Europeans have for centuries been constructing an image of a static and underdeveloped Eastern Europe and thereby ‘fabricating a view of Eastern culture that can be studied, depicted, [criticised] and reproduced. ‘Implicit in this fabrication’, writes Said, is the idea that ‘Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior.’’13After visiting Russia in the 1630s, German mathematician Adam Olearius described Eastern Europeans as culturally barbaric, despite the fact that they were physically similar to him.14 Olearius claimed that Eastern Europeans lacked critical thought and basic manners. Two centuries later, Marquis de Custine confirmed the stereotype to be still intact when commenting that Eastern Europeans were ‘bereft of time and of will’ and asking ‘who would not pity these people?’15

Though these writers were discussing a different, bygone East, Maria Todorova has applied the Saidian paradigm to modern Eastern Europe. In Todorova’s analysis, recognition is paid to the fact that the othering of Eastern Europeans is more subtle today, and modern Eastern Europe is a far less vague entity than Said’s unknown ‘Orient’. However, the scholar’s theory of Balkanism builds on Saidian concepts. For example, its preface is that ‘Balkanisation’, in twentieth century Europe, was a synonym for a reversion to the tribal, backward

barbarianism.16 As Todorova develops Said’s notion of Western othering of Eastern Europe, she explains the stages of Europe’s divisions in the twentieth century. The phrase “to go to Europe” existed in the Balkan vernacular of the early twentieth century as a means of referring to travel to any of the countries which lay West of them, signifying that people of 11 Danusha Goska, ‘WESTERN EUROPEAN VS EASTERN EUROPEAN RESPONSES TO MASS, UNVETTED MUSLIM IMMIGRATION’, http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260120/western-european-vs-eastern-european-responses-danusha-v-goska, [Accessed: 09/06/2016].

12 Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).

13 Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terrorism, (New York: Pantheon, 2004), 32.

14 Adam Olearius, The Travels of Olearius In Seventeenth-Century Russia, trans. Samuel Baron, (Stanford: Stanford University Press: 1967), 126-134.

15 Marquis de Custine, Empire of the Czar, (New York; London: Doubleday, 1839), 112. 16 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3.

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the Balkans considered themselves quite apart Europe.17 Twentieth century poet and

politician Allen Upward confirmed that the feeling was mutual when he declared ‘Europe, in short, is Latin Christendom; Paris is the capital and French its language’.18 The statement expresses how during much of the twentieth century ‘Europe’ was commonly used as a substitute word for not only Latin Christendom, but for progress, order and prosperity. The derivatives of Balkanisation in Orientalism are clear in this blatant contention that Europe is defined by time, or development, rather than geography.19

Todorova also heavily criticises the concept of Central Europe which emerged during the early 1980s and featured anti-Islamic sentiments. Fred Halliday has stressed that this populist anti-Muslimism became a part of the general anti-immigrant attitude in Western Europe. Halliday has argued that negative sentiments have been embodied in rejection of veiling and in the policies of right-wing political parties.20 This renders Western European

representations of a racist Eastern Europe wildly hypocritical. Whilst there has been

increased interest recently in Eastern European countries and their open free spaces amongst Western teenagers, and this suggests the representation of topic in this thesis is beginning to be challenged, Halliday’s research and the sources collected for this study are revealing of the fact that the balance is yet to be completely redressed.21

British newspaper The Daily Mail’s November 2015 article titled, ‘A Fight the Civilised World Must Not Lose’, noted that the perpetrators of the Paris attacks entered Europe by posing as refugees, and sparked illogical calls to close borders by readers.22 The article demonstrated this thick and long history of Western stereotyping of Eastern Europe,

particularly through the headline which was reminiscent of late nineteenth and early twentieth century discussions of the Mission Civilisatrice, or Western countries’ ‘duty’ to civilise

17 Ibid., 43

18 Allen Upward, The East and Europe: The Report of an Unofficial Mission to the European Provinces of Turkey on the Eve of the Revolution, (London: John Murray, 1908), 50.

19 Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 43.

20 Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the Middle East, (New York: I B Tauris, 2003), 182.

21 Eastern Europe’s popularity amongst young Westerners suggests the area’s image is being revamped. Miera Iela in Riga recently topped Skyscanner’s list of the top twenty hipster neighbourhoods in the world, beating Amsterdam Noord and Stockholm’s Södermalm. See, ‘The 20 most hipster neighbourhoods in the world’, http://www.skyscanner.net/news/20-most-hipster-neighbourhoods-world, [Accessed: 15/05/2016]. 22 Daily Mail Comment, ‘A Fight the Civilised World Must Not Lose’,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3319936/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-fight-civilised-world-not-lose.html, [Accessed: 12/04/16].

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underdeveloped nations.23 This rhetoric has been touched upon in the media whenever East/

West sensitivities have differed, for example just recently over Ukraine, and over Iraq in 2003.24 Maria Pestalardo conducted a similar study to this one regarding media framing during the Iraq War.25 Through quantitative analysis Pestalardo was able to prove that ‘European and Latin American newspapers framed a bigger and more balanced picture in covering more sides of the war and quoting diverse sources while American media covered a narrower range of war perspectives and quoted coalition sources in almost all of their news stories and editorials’.26 This thesis will build upon these insights, that there can be found ‘significant differences in the content of… reporting according to the geographical area of the media’.27 It is anticipated that Western European media will be found to have similarities with those of the United States in Pestalardo’s study, as it tends to portray Eastern Europe as a regressive, standardised block and foster negative stereotypes of Eastern Europeans through media framing and selective reporting.

What this historical context confirms is that the tendency to describe Eastern Europeans as primeval is not a supposition which was generated by journalists reporting on the current refugee crisis. Rather it is a deeply-routed affinity, which has resulted in an East West divide being exacerbated through media framing of today’s migrant crisis. The irony is that this is a crisis to which the solution lies in unity.

23 This epoch saw Britain, France, Portugal and Spain colonising and claiming territory across the world. Their invasions were rationalised by the proposition that they would ‘save’ said countries by spreading their ‘civilised’ values. Rather than merely governing colonial peoples, the Europeans attempted to “Westernise” them in accordance with a colonial ideology known as ‘assimilation’. The era of the Mission Civilisatrice further helps explain the route of Western ideas of superiority and, with that, the patronising, if unintentionally so, style of reporting we see today with regards to Eastern European reactions to the refugee crisis. In the 1990s, Said prescribed the metaphor of the feminine East being penetrated by the stronger, Western traveller when discussing the tone of travel writers who embarked on seeing the under-developed Eastern Europe. Like patriarchy it is widely considered that this demeaning idea has been defeated, however this thesis will point out that, as with the fight for complete equality for women, the process is not complete. See, ‘Civilising Mission’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilizing_mission, [Accessed: 21/04/2016].

24 Natalie Nougayrède, ‘Healing Europe’s east-west divide is central to a lasting refugee solution’, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/03/europe-east-west-divide-refugee-eu-leaders, [Accessed: 12/02/2016].

25 The scholar analysed the coverage of the Iraq war in nine different newspapers during the week before and the week after it commenced. The newspapers selected were chosen based on their national reputations and online availability, as will be done in this study. The stories themselves were selected by searching for all articles which contained the word Iraq, and then passing them through a research randomiser table and selecting a sample of 600 stories. This thesis will apply elements of Pestalardo’s methodology to this case, though it will be done on a smaller scale, and seventy five percent of the articles used for this study will relate to particular events which have occurred in Eastern Europe, as opposed to the refugee crisis as a whole, as was with the Iraq war in Pestalardo’s case. See, Maria Pestalardo, “War on the Media: The News Framing of the Iraqi War in the United States, Europe, and Latin America”, (Thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2006).

26 Ibid., 2. 27Ibid.

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CHAPTER ONE LITERATURE REVIEW

The above mentioned Maria Pestalardo’s study highlighted the power of the media to

influence public sentiments. The scholar’s work delineates that media framing is responsible for not only detecting Europe’s East/West divide, but creating the idea that Europe is split into a solely compassionate West and sorely selfish East. The media shape public opinion, and this in turn affects policy making. The policy in question when it comes to the migration debate in Europe is the Dublin Agreement. Signed in 1990, taking effect in 1997, the Dublin rules state that any refugee who arrives on EU soil can only apply for asylum in the country where he or she first sets foot. If they cross borders to another country after being

fingerprinted, they can be returned to the former. The United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has criticised the Dublin agreement for its inability to ensure that responsibilities are shared.28 It was correct: during the escalation of the migrant crisis in 2015, Southern and Eastern EU countries became hampered with almost the entire weight of cross-Mediterranean migration.29 Most northern countries expressed concern but did little. When Germany voluntarily assumed responsibility for processing Syrian asylum applications, Western newspapers took this as a symbol of Western compassion, as opposed to European compassion, and discoursed East/West division.30 This was despite the fact that France had just installed barriers at their southern boundaries to prohibit refugees from travelling north, and the Czech Republic, in the ‘unwelcoming East’, had offered to process the applications of Syrian refugees who had previously applied for asylum in other EU countries, allowing them to either stay in the Czech Republic or continue to travel elsewhere.31 Despite this, in summer 2015 the controversial Dublin rules collapsed under the weight of mass migration. The right wing Hungarian government reacted unsatisfactorily, by building a razor-wire fence along which police mistreated refugees.32 Without denying that Hungary’s actions are wrong, the 28 Victoria Smythies and Lara Ramazzotti, ‘The Dublin Regulation: A Critical Examination of a Troubled System’, https://internationalrefugeelaw.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/the-dublin-regulation-a-critical-examination-of-a-troubled-system/, [Accessed: 9/04/2016].

29 John Lichfield, ‘Refugee crisis: How Europe's alarming lack of unity over the issue could bring about the break up of the EU’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-how-europes-alarming-lack-of-unity-over-the-issue-could-bring-about-the-break-up-of-10492151.html, [Accessed: 12/04/2016]. 30 Ian Traynor, ‘Refugee crisis: east and west split as leaders resent Germany for waiving rules’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/05/migration-crisis-europe-leaders-blame-brussels-hungary-germany, [Accessed: 12/042016].

31 Lichfield, ‘Refugee Crisis’. 32 Ibid.

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country was in a difficult position. Under the Dublin rules it was required to question all those who arrived at its frontier and ensure they did not enter the EU en masse, whilst starting asylum procedures for those who deserved them. However the country was simply not equipped to do either.33 Rather than be worthwhile and appreciate this problem, media fury often preferred to talk about the racist actions by a racist country. One headline read ‘Racist or just brutal realism? Hungary's been condemned for building a new Iron Curtain to keep out migrants. But its PM says he's done it to avoid multicultural Britain's mistakes... and his popularity is soaring.’34 The words ‘Iron Curtain’ denote an Eastern Europe which has not progressed since the Stalin era. The headline suggests Hungarians are becoming unanimously supportive of their racist Prime Minister’s stance, and the article makes no reference to the many creative Hungarians who, with all their resistive spirit, responded by launching a series of one hundred and fifty posters containing messages such as ‘Come to Hungary, we're already working in England’ or ‘We apologise for our Prime Minister.’35 Current theories on media framing and refugee representations help to explain what promulgates this selective reporting and how framing occurs. The theories explore the humanitarian and threat themes identified by a UNHCR report of media representations of the refugee crisis, which

proclaimed the clear message that: ‘for media work on refugees, one size does not fit all. Effective media advocacy in different European nations requires targeted, tailored campaigns, which takes into account their unique cultures and political context’.36

The following theories will help this thesis to show that the refugee crisis is fostering negative and polarised media representations of Eastern Europe in Western European press, and suggest that these depictions are contributing to making Europe’s gap between East and West wider and wider. Unfortunately, widening the gap causes problems within the EU, including threats to the open continental borders which is one of the Union’s greatest achievements, and an end to the continent’s close bond with universal human rights. As 33 Ibid.

34 Paul Bracchi, ‘Racist or just brutal realism? Hungary's been condemned for building a new Iron Curtain to keep out migrants. But its PM says he's done it to avoid multicultural Britain's mistakes... and his popularity is soaring’, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3258298/Racist-just-brutal-realism-Hungary-s-condemned-building-new-Iron-Curtain-migrants-PM-says-s-avoid-multicultural-Britain-s-mistakes-popularity-soaring.html, [Accessed: 10/04/2016].

35 Rebeka Dora Kajos, ‘"We apologise for our Prime Minister": Hungarians on their Government's racism’, http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/society/article/we-apologise-for-our-prime-minister-hungarians-on-their-governments-racism.html, [Accessed: 11/04/2016].

36 Mike Berry, Inaki Garcia-Blanco, Kerry Moore, ‘Press Coverage of the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in the EU: A Content Analysis of Five European Countries’, Report prepared for the United Nations High

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Angela Merkel summed up in August 2015, this will mean the death of ‘the Europe we dreamed of’.37

Current Theories on Media Framing

Robert Entman has described media framing as ‘the process of culling a few elements of perceived reality and assembling a narrative that highlights connections among them to promote a particular interpretation.’38 Language, style, structure, and, particularly in the case of the refugee crisis, images, contribute to construction of public perception. Pan and Kosicki have identified four primary structural dimensions of news: syntactic structures, script structures, thematic structures, or the use of causal statements to emphasise blame, and rhetorical structures.39Use of these structural devices allows journalists to decide which

elements of a story have the most salience. They can promote a particular definition or answer to a problem, manufacture a particular interpretation or moral evaluation, and justify or recommend a particular solution.40 Whilst framing sometimes happens organically, the

result of an organisation’s scrambling to meet a deadline, or poorly trained writers and editors, it is more commonly an active process, revealing of media prejudices. Nelson has pointed out that white male elites are often relied upon for quotes, insight and analysis in the press which leads to the interests of this group being promoted to, and served by, the wider population.41 Elites also source other framing devices, such as photographs, cartoons and

catchphrases. According to Iyengar, journalists frame their stories to focus either on individual cases or broader social trends, and this directs audiences’ views on where social responsibility lies.42 For Gamson, the way the media organise facts determines public

sentiment.43 For example, migration may be framed in a way that emphasises the misfortune

of refugees, but the issue could equally be encased in threats to the economy, national

37Paul Taylor, ‘Migration crisis tears at EU's cohesion and tarnishes its image’,

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-eu-analysis-idUSKCN0R50Y520150905, [Accessed: 12/04/2016].

38 Robert Entman, ‘Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power,’ Journal of Communications, 5, No.7,

(2007), 164.

39 Gerald Kosicki and Zhongdang Pan, "Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse," Political

Communication10 (1993): 55-75.

40 Robert Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication, (1993), 52.

41 Caitlin O’Donnell, ‘Visual Persuasion: The Media’s Use of Images in Framing People Groups’, The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 4, No. 1, (2013), 96.

42Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), 127.

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identity, or xenophobia. As will be outlined in the methodology chapter, this thesis uses these theories on media framing as it aims to discover which modes of framing are used by

Western media in their creation of the distorted image of a homogenous, unprepossessing Eastern Europe.

Theories on Representations of Refugees

In 1995, Liisa Malkki, a key scholar on the emergence of the refugee and refugee studies,

considered the social and legal position of the refugee. Malkki noted that the refugee as a social category and distinct ‘legal problem of global dimensions’ was configured in post World War Two Europe.44 It was during this era that refugee camps became crucial in the management of mass displacement. The process of attaining orderly resettlement of peoples involved the accumulation of documentation on camp inhabitants, medical checks, schooling rehabilitation and public discipline.45 Through these processes the modern refugee emerged as the knowable, nameable figure which we are seeing in newspapers across Europe today.46 Since the current refugee crisis mirrors the migration problems during the Second World War, it being the largest refugee crisis since that time, we are seeing the social category being consolidated and reconfigured today. Malkki also pointed out that another reason Europe warrants distinct attention when tracking the development of the refugee is that the

international laws regarding refugees and their related legal instruments came about in the aftermath of the war in Europe, and largely as a result of the powerful sense of post-war shame and responsibility for the predicaments of the people who were fleeing the

Holocaust.47 The sense of accountability which is arguably felt by Western Europeans today towards the cause of the trouble in the Middle East which refugees are fleeing is reminiscent of that shame in post-war Europe. As Malkki critically mapped the emergence process of the refugee, the scholar identified a range of discursive and institutional fields within which the refugee or the exiled individuals have been established. The domains include: ‘international law, international studies, documentary production by the United Nations and other

international refugee agencies, development studies, and literary studies.’48 Finally, in her 44 Daniel Rellstab and Christiane Schlote, Representations of War, Migration, and Refugeehood:

Interdisciplinary Perspectives, (Abington: Routledge, 2014), 4.

45 Liisa Malkki, ‘REFUGEES AND EXILE: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things’, Annual Reviews Anthropology, (1995), 24, 498.

46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 500. 48 Ibid., 497.

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article ‘Refugees and Exile’, Malkki discusses Stein and Keller’s concept of the refugee experience, and how the experience of refugeehood can in fact lead to refugees joining a world which is above politics and beyond history, and in which they are simply victims.49 The sense of this can be found in the media today, particularly in the media frame of the innocent, harmless refugee. However it can also be extended to a media representation of refugees as objects or burdens, rather than people.

In 2005, Baldwin Van Gorp’s research into media framing of asylum seekers determined the innocent victim and the unwanted invaders, or threatening intruders, to be the most dominant media representations relative to immigrants. One out of five Belgian newspaper articles in Van Gorp’s study referred ‘purely’ to the meta-communicative message that asylum seekers are innocent victims, and one out of four referred to the message that they are intruders.50 Haynes, Devereux and Breen identified five perpetual stereotypes of refugees typically found in international media and examined them for xenophobia and racism, in order to highlight their detrimental potential. The media frames established included asylum seekers as an economic threat, asylum seekers as a threat to national identity and local integrity, asylum seekers as criminals, asylum seekers as social deviants, and finally, asylum seekers as ‘illegal aliens’.51 Exaggerations of specific incidents and firing of false assumptions by the press have contributed to increased hostility towards asylum seekers in Scotland in the twenty first century, according to Ceri Mollard.52 Strategies such as publishing letters from readers who have been influenced by and are reflecting back the newspaper’s own stance, ignoring quotes and facts from Non-Government Organisations and societies that support asylum seekers, and failing to include quotes from asylum seekers themselves have allowed negative

representations of refugees to fester, even giving ‘respectability to racism’.53

49 Ibid., 510.

50 Baldwin Van Gorp, ‘Where is the Frame? Victims and Intruders in the Belgian Press Coverage of the Asylum Issue’, European Journal of Communication, (2005), 20, No. 4, 503.

51 Amanda Haynes, Eoin Devereux , Michael Breen, ‘A Cosy Consensus on Deviant Discourse: How the refugee and asylum seeker meta-narrative has endorsed an interpretive crisis in relation to the transnational politics of the world’s displaced persons’, Working Paper WP2004-03, Department of Sociology University of Limerick and Department of Media and Communication Studies, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, 2

52 Ceri Mollard, ‘ASYLUM: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE HEADLINES: Asylum Seekers Press Report’, Poverty Programme of Oxfam GB, (2001), 25.

53 Terry Williams, National Union of Journalists, and the Refugees, Asylum Seekers and the Media Project. See Ibid., 33.

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Sharon Pickering’s study on representations of refugees in the Australian press found that the presence of refugees tended to be associated with deviance. However Pickering also noted that certain categories of refugees appeared to acquire special status and become ‘popular’ in the media.54 Matthew Gibney made the same observation regarding Kosovo refugees in Europe in the late 1990s.55 The scholars both attributed this special status, whereby refugee groups were exempt from being attacked by the media, to the characteristics of the model refugee: ‘very young or very old, afraid; persecuted by an internationally proclaimed

oppressive state’, the ideal refugee is present in the host country by invitation and originates from wars which the host country has publicly proclaimed interest in.56 Crucially, she/he is also visibly grateful to be in the host country. Pickering suggests that if any of the

characteristics of this proto refugee begin to slip, the media will quickly return to the more conventional devalued representations of refugees as ungrateful, aggressive, demanding and draining. This reaction proves that asylum is commonly treated as an act of ‘charity’ instead of a moral obligation.57 David Farrier also addresses the assumptions made by citizens of host countries in his analysis of the figures of the refugee and the asylum seeker. For Farrier, when refugees claim the sanctuary of a country promising the freedom and justice denied in the oppressive regimes that they flee, people in the West smugly assume it is they who create the safe haven, and the media agree by celebrating Western compassion and heroism. Farrier criticises this, for it places the migrant in a permanent second class, dependent state: ‘the "aporia of sanctuary" means indefinite internment in a camp dispositif making the asylum seeker the new subaltern who initiates the step beyond postcolonial discourse.’58

The theories outlined here have guided selection of the theoretical tools used in this thesis to interpret data. Malkki’s work has led this thesis to give attention to Western European countries’ responsibility in creating the conditions which refugees are fleeing as possible explanation for their preaching of a need to increase quotas. Furthermore the work carried out by scholars such as Van Gorp and Pickering more recently has contributed to the thesis’ theoretical lens which focuses on the tropes of the innocent refugee and the threatening invader.

54 Sharon Pickering, ‘Common Sense and Original Deviancy: New Discourses and Asylum Seekers in Australia’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 14, No. 2, (2001), 176.

55 Matthew Gibney, ‘Kosovo and beyond: popular and unpopular refugees’, Forced Migration Review,5, (1999), 28-30.

56 Pickering, ‘Common Sense and Original Deviancy’, 177. 57 Ibid.

58 Jon Kertzer, ‘David Farrier, Postcolonial Asylum: Seeking Sanctuary Before the Law’, ARIEL, Peer Reviewed Journal, 43, No. 1, (2012), 127.

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CHAPTER TWO METHODOLOGY

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For the creation of Graphs 1, 2 and 3 in this study, twelve newspapers were selected that represent the diversity in the European media landscape and cover both Eastern and Western Europe. Half of the newspapers come from Western Europe, Germany and the United

Kingdom, and half are from Eastern European countries, Hungary and Poland. The countries have been selected based on their relatively prominent responses and roles in dealing with the refugee crisis, as well as for the fact that they produce significant amounts of press in English and online.

In Germany, Deutsche Welle Akademie, Bild and Der Spiegel were selected for examination. Deutsche Welle is Germany’s international broadcaster that aims to convey Germany as liberal, democratic and based on the rule of law. Deutsche Welle Akademie is its branch of online articles. It is useful for this study as it presents the typical stance in Germany that is seen by the international community: the liberal perspective which has been championed by Germany’s government. Bild distributes more copies on average and greatly contrasts in

political stance: a less highbrow, more traditionalist publication. As Germany’s biggest paper its circulation reached 2500,000 in 2013. Bild is in broadsheet format but it is a tabloid, or

Boulevardzeitung style paper. Unlike Deutsche Welle it features a daily dose of scantily clad models and has been described as ‘notorious for its mix of gossip, inflammatory language, and sensationalism’.59 Traditionally a conservative paper, Bild shows its political support for Germany’s more right wing parties. It is useful to this study because it provides evidence of the right wing media representations of the refugee crisis, in the country that is internationally recognised as the frontrunner of Western openness to migration. The newspaper’s right leaning tradition was demonstrated when its impassionate ‘We’re Helping’ campaign to support refugees was met with calls of hypocrisy, and confusion that the entity had suddenly gone ‘soft on refugees’.60 Finally, Der Speigel has been selected for analysis because it is well known for its excellent investigative journalism and tendencies to step into controversy and reveal political scandals. Consequently it unsurprisingly has been loquacious regarding the refugee crisis. Der Spiegel was founded by the liberal counterpart to Axel Springer, Rudolf Augstein, and is one of Europe’s largest publications: its circulation stands at 840, 000 copies per week. According to The Economist, Der Spiegel is one of continental Europe's most

59 Quote from Michael Steininger, The Christian Science Monitor, 18 January 2012, See, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/csmonitor_historic/advancedsearch.html, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

60 Janosch Delcker, ‘Germany’s Bild goes soft on refugees’, http://www.politico.eu/article/germanys-bild-goes-soft-on-refugees/, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

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influential magazines, making it instrumental in guiding reactions to the refugee crisis and therefore invaluable in this study.61

In the United Kingdom, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Sun are used as sources for the creation of Graphs 1, 2 and 3. The Guardian is a national newspaper which sells 164,000 copies per day.62 The paper has a longstanding reputation as a left wing entity: Friedrich Engels called it an ‘organ of the Middle Class’.63 The Guardian was therefore chosen based on the preliminary hypothesis that it would provide a perfect example of the Western compassion that is under assessment in this dissertation. The paper is marketed as a quality newspaper without any party affiliation; however its readers tend to be left wing. The paper’s position as a platform for such views has led to the appellation ‘Guardianista’, usually used negatively to stereotype readers as middle class and overly politically correct. When

comparing The Guardian to other more right wing media outlets in the UK, it was expected before conducting the research that the contrast would be stark and the notion of ‘Western compassion’ vs ‘Eastern selfishness’ would become an obvious oversimplification. The Telegraph was chosen largely to help provide this comparison. Often referred to as the ‘Torygraph’ due to its longstanding personal links with the Conservative party in the UK, The Telegraph is the most extreme of the UK’s right wing populist broadsheet publications. Its circulation is 479, 290 daily.64 Finally, The Sun represents the down market tabloid newspapers in the UK, which attempt to provide both world news and entertainment or gossip. The Sun has been chosen because it is Britain’s biggest selling newspaper, with a circulation of 1,716,361 daily as of 19 May 2016.65 Under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch, the paper has a reputation for controversy and makes a great source of analysis for this investigation because it has frequently made headlines for having a loud and popular opinion on the migrant crisis. A change.org petition was initiated in 2015 urging the paper to fire columnist Katie Hopkins after she referred to refugees to Britain as ‘cockroaches’ and ‘feral

61 The Economist. 16 November 2002. See, ‘Der Spiegel’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Spiegel, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

62 As of the second half of 2015. See Statistica: The Statistics Portal, ‘Circulation of The Guardian in the United Kingdom (UK) from 1st half 2003 to 2nd half 2015 (in 1,000 copies)’,

http://www.statista.com/statistics/288278/circulation-trend-of-the-guardian-newspaper-uk/, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

63 Friedrich Engels and Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: With Preface Written in 1892, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 69.

64 Author Unknown, ‘Our Audience’, http://www.createsolution.co.uk/toolkit/audience-pdf/generated.pdf, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

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humans’ who were ‘spreading like the norovirus’.66 Her comments were condemned by the UNHCR. Not long after this, another petition was undertaken to force an apology from the newspaper after it published the headline: ‘1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy for jihadis’.67 The article was based on a biased and debunked survey. A correction was issued in The Times, a paper also under the ownership of Murdoch, however no actual official apology was issued. At the other end of the continent lie Hungary and Poland. The Budapest Business Journal, Blikk, and Daily News Hungary have provided the Hungarian articles of examination used to create the graphs. The Budapest Business Journal is targeted, as the name suggests, at businesspeople and is considered a highbrow paper. Though written in English, the paper is ‘not just for expats’ and its largely educated readers are attracted to it as it is a good source of financial and business news.68 It was chosen because its readers represent the demographic of Hungarians who defy the stereotypical view of racist and unwelcoming Eastern Europeans which was expected to be found in the Western newspaper articles used in this study. For example The Guardian sums that in ‘Western eyes’ the Eastern European reaction to the refugee crisis appears ‘heartless and mindless’, however The Budapest Business Journal emotional tone tended to be sympathetic towards refugees. Thus its readers are likely to mirror this and disprove the stereotype.69 The Budapest Business Journal is also the oldest, largest and most popular newspaper of its kind with a circulation of around 8700 copies.70 This suggests the compassionate Hungarian is not an enigma but rather there are many. To help provide a full representation of the Hungarian media scene, Blikk is also used as a source for this thesis. Described by the BBC as ‘loud’, ‘brash’ and ‘frequently vulgar’, Blikk is Hungary’s most popular tabloid newspaper with a circulation reported at 150, 000 in 2015.71 Unlike the other sources in this thesis, Blikk does not publish articles in English. However it 66 Izzy Saunders, ‘Remove Katie Hopkins as a Columnist’, Petition, https://www.change.org/p/the-sun-newspaper-remove-katie-hopkins-as-a-columnist, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

For the article in question, see Katie Hopkins, ‘Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants’,

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/katiehopkins/6414865/Katie-Hopkins-I-would-use-gunships-to-stop-migrants.html, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

67 Will Worley, ‘Sun forced to admit “1 in 5 British Muslims” story was significantly misleading',

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/ipso-sun-british-muslims-story-headline-significantly-misleading-a6953771.html, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

68 ‘Budapest Business Journal’, http://bbj.hu/site/, [Accessed: 29/06/2016].

69 Andras Schweitzer, ‘Eastern Europe’s hard attitude to refugees is born out of trauma’,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2015/oct/22/refugee-eastern-europe-trauma-governments-bigotry, [Accessed: 11/06/2016].

70 Author Unknown, ‘Budapest Business Journal’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Business_Journal, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

71 Author Unknown, ‘The Press in Hungary’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3616011.stm, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

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has been admitted into this study nonetheless due to its important level of influence in

Hungary. There is also the option to translate the entire website online to a sufficient standard for a project of which much of the interest is in headlines and images. Finally Daily News Hungary is an English language Hungarian online newspaper which publishes its own views as well as readers’ letters. It has the projective aim to ‘convey the Hungarian feeling and atmosphere’ to enable those outside Hungary, or those living in Hungary who do not speak the language, to gain an insight into Hungarian people’s lives.72 This makes it an ideal source for a study which aims to identify Europeans’ real sentiments so that it can compare them to the impressions given by the media.

Last but not least, the Polish articles of assessment which contributed to the graphs come from Lodz Post, The Warsaw Voice and New Poland Express. In Poland the distinction between broadsheet and tabloid newspapers does not have the same connotation as it does, for example, in the UK, as most newspapers converted to the tabloid format in the 1990s. Nonetheless this selection of papers includes both regional and national publications, provides representation of both working and middle class Polish citizens and covers a variation of political stances. Lodz Post is an English language source for news of the city of Lodz, and Poland in general. The paper’s political stance is relatively centralist and it aims to be unbiased. It includes a sports, entertainment and lifestyle and travel section too. The Warsaw Voice is an English language newspaper which publishes political, economic, social and cultural news about Poland and its surrounding countries. According to the magazine webpage, the publication reports on ‘trends, events and people, publishes interviews, news reports and features, analysis and opinion, and never diverges from the principles followed since the first issue was published on Oct. 23, 1988 – credibility, independence and

objectivity.’73 The paper has a circulation of 10, 500. Finally New Poland Express is a Polish tabloid newspaper which covers entertainment as well as general interest news about Poland and Polish people. Across the three popular newspapers a substantial range of the Polish population is represented.

An important consideration when understanding the methodology as well as when reflecting on the results is that not all newspapers are equally powerful in shaping public opinion. Due to the scale of this study it was impossible to include evidence from every media source in 72 Author Unknown, ‘About Us’, http://dailynewshungary.com/about-us/, [Accessed: 23/05/2016].

73 Gregor Gowans, ‘Polish News in English – Online and In Print’,

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each country. Whilst an equal number of papers were assessed from each country, the media landscape does vary across Europe. In the United Kingdom it was easiest to find sources, not only because every publication is in English, but also because the UK was the front running European country in which newspapers made the transition to online. This meant there were virtually no articles that were available to readers in the country that were not available to be analysed in this study. On the other hand, certain Eastern European newspapers such as Magyar Hírlap which heavily shapes public opinion in Hungary but does not publish online, and Polish newspaper Fakt which is not published in English but is the most widely read newspaper in Poland - it has a circulation of 715,000 as of 2003 - were regretfully not able to be included in the data analysis. Therefore one of the limitations of the Graphs is that they are unable to represent the opinions expressed by Magyar Hírlap and Fakt, yet they do hold the results of, for example, Germany’s Der Spiegel, the United Kingdom’s The Telegraph, and Poland’s Lodz Post, which are the German, British and Polish equivalents of Magyar Hírlap, and Germany’s Bild, the UK’s The Sun and Hungary’s Blik which are the German, British and Hungarian equivalents of Fakt, in terms of style, scale and influence. However, replacements were found and the study still uses an equal sample of German, British,

Hungarian and Polish newspapers that range in political spectrum and style. It would also be an appropriate assumption that the Eastern European newspapers which did publish in English and were used instead, do provide similar commentary on refugees and the refugee crisis to Magyar Hírlap and Fakt. Furthermore even without the language barrier, newspapers that were the exact equivalent in terms of power in influencing public opinion to those chosen for the other countries would have been impossible to locate, because that amount of

accuracy and similarity simply does not exist.

A total of forty eight articles have been analysed for the creation of Graphs 1, 2 and 3, four from each of the twelve newspapers. Three of the four were articles discussing the three Eastern European incidents which sparked outrage and are assessed in chapter one. These were selected by doing a search in the newspapers’ websites’ search bar for the key words ‘Hungary fence’, as most reports tend to refer to the physical border as a fence rather than a wall, ‘Petra Laszlo’, and ‘wSieci’, or where there was not an article written directly about the cover ‘Polish media’ was used as a substitute. The most relevant articles written during the month of each incident, or closest to the date of the incident, were chosen. With regards to the fence in Hungary the date used was 17 June 2015, the date of its announcement, the Petra Laszlo incident occurred on 8 September 2015 so this was the date used, and the wSieci cover

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was released on 17 February 2016, thus this date was used. The remaining sources which contributed to the graphs, the fourth article sourced from each paper, were general articles regarding the migrant crisis. These articles were chosen by searching ‘refugee crisis’ in the same search bars, picking ‘in order of most relevant’ where the option was given, and taking the first articles to appear in the list which were written between 1 June 2015 and 31 March 2016. These dates have been selected as they are inclusive of the three incidents discussed in chapter one, and thus are representative of the height of discussions of Eastern Europe and Europe’s East/West divide in relation to the refugee crisis. To broaden this thesis’ evidence base further, a number of other articles from across Europe have also contributed to the study and are used in Chapter 5 to exemplify the two media tropes: ‘the innocent refugee’ and the ‘unwanted invader’. Many of these were chosen through a simple google search of the incident or refugee representation being discussed.

All articles were analysed with attention for indicators of the two media frames which have been identified by theorists on refugee representations as the most prominent in the media. The frames are: the unarmed, innocent refugee, and the unwanted, threatening intruder. The specific interpretive repertoires, which have been defined by discursive psychologists Potter and Wetherell as ‘a lexicon or register of terms and metaphors drawn upon to characterise and evaluate actions and events’, believed to signify these tropes or frames, are outlined in Table 1.74 These indicators have been recognised with the help of the work of scholars John Richardson and Theo van Leeuwan on analysing newspapers and social actors, Baldwin Van Gorp’s study on victims and intruders in the Belgian press coverage of the asylum issue, and John Cartner’s research design in his study of Australian rhetoric, discourse and the public agenda with regards to refugee representation.

John Richardson has shown the ability of words in newspapers to convey ‘connoted as well as denoted meanings’, and the ‘imprint of society’.75 Choice of wording helps to direct the stance of a text and its ability to influence, persuade and offer ideological views about the subject. Richardson gives the example of reporting during the Iraq war as evidence for how discourse can be used to shape events and determine public reactions to them. Richardson explains that whilst it could be argued that Britain and America conquered Iraq, ‘the adjective “conquer” suggests mass murder and unlawful invasion, which would be counterproductive 74 Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell, Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour, (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1987), 138.

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to represent Britain as the good people.’76 Instead the word ‘liberate’ is chosen for use in UK media, which suggests Britain is freeing Iraqis in an act of goodwill. The resulting

representation paints Britain as the ‘good guys’.77 Based on this research, one of the

indicators used to assess how far each of the two tropes was represented across Europe was ‘emotional tone’. Choice of wording and language, demonstrated by Richardson as being crucially influential, were assessed in each article that contributed to Graphs 1, 2 and 3, for the feelings they stimulated regarding refugees, be they compassion, or fear and xenophobia. Similarly to Richardson, van Leeuwen, in his Discourse and Practice, investigated how the participants of social practices, or social actors, are represented in English discourse. The scholar shows how the identification and presentation of social actors is crucial in

determining the kind of narrative presented by the media. His work is central to this thesis, as it outlines exactly how language can represent events both impersonally or personally. Van Leeuwen gives the example of representation of a bombing; a newspaper can choose to either show an image of destruction caused, featuring the faces of victims, or it can show a diagram with maps and arrows pointing to targets. The choice is between triggering a reader to

criticise the human effects of the bombing, or encouraging them to forget that there are human costs altogether. For this reason one of the indicators the articles were analysed for was ‘How the migration problem is approached’; i.e. was the refugee crisis painted as a humanitarian disaster or as evidence of overly lax migration laws? Van Leeuwen’s work also delineates that the very naming of refugees by journalists as ‘asylum seekers’, ‘migrants’ or ‘refugees’ affects how they are viewed and treated by society.78 Reports on ‘migrants’ and ‘asylum seekers’ tend to be used in articles which discuss threats to welfare and

overcrowding and thus the intruder frame, whereas the word ‘refugee’ refers to the UNHCR’s definition of the victim refugee and tends to be used in articles with sympathetic tones, and thus for creation of the innocent victim frame. The labelling of the migrant, and tone reflected via language chosen for headlines and topic sentences in the articles, have therefore been used as indicators of the tropes being created in each article.

76 Nathen Amin, ‘My Dissertation; An Analysis of Newspaper Representations of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888 and the Role the Media Played in the Infamy of Jack the Ripper’, https://nathenamin.com/2011/01/04/my- dissertation-an-analysis-of-newspaper-representations-of-the-whitechapel-murders-of-1888-and-the-role-the-media-played-in-the-infamy-of-jack-the-ripper/, [Accessed: 11/06/2016].

77 Ibid.

Also see Richardson, Analysing Newspapers, 48.

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In Van Gorp’s study, the role or function of the migrant was identified as a key signifier of which frame an article was depicting. Those described as passive and in need of help, or vulnerable to human traffickers and scams, contributed to the image of the innocent refugee. However the savvy migrant was portrayed as dishonest and likely to break the rules on arrival to host countries, thus representative of the unwanted intruder. The source and cause of the migration problem and discussions of responsibility also link to this issue. Those dishonest migrants tended to be explained by insufficient migration policies and accompanied by calls for stricter laws and restrictions at borders, whereas the innocent refugees were explained by the shocking conflict zones and inhumane persecution they were fleeing from, as well as recognition of the part played by the European country in antagonising that conflict.

Therefore, other factors which were used to express the tropes included the ‘way the migrant is carrying themselves’, where ‘responsibility’ is directed and ‘what needs to be done’. Though John Cartner’s study discussed migrant representations in Australia, it is reminiscent of this one; some of the language patterns, words, phrases and images created by the

Australian press to encourage xenophobia and or compassion can be found in European reportage. The similarity is most notably reflected by Cartner’s discussion of attention grabbing, stark statements such as ‘KEEP OUT: Boat People not our Problem: PM’.79 This was printed alongside an image of an out of scale map which featured a large boat invading a tiny by comparison Australia.80 The headline reminds of a 26 January 2016 Daily Mail article in the UK which exclaimed ‘PM: WHY WE MUST NOT TAKE 3,000 MIGRANTS’.81 The spread was placed together with another article claiming a British tennis player, who is herself an immigrant: ‘Hands off our tennis golden girl, Aussies!’82 The ignorance and double standards are, unfortunately, not uncommon. One of the most striking findings in Cartner’s study regards the use of water metaphors in media reports about refugees and asylum seekers. Metataphors of floods and images of overcrowded boats suggested a threat or invasion. Charteris-Black, in his study of immigration metaphors in the UK’s 2005 electoral campaign, similarly argued that water or liquid metaphors are common in the communication of

Conservative views on immigration because they play to both disaster and container scenarios.83 On the other hand, metaphors of shelter, gates and fortress Europe have been 79 Ibid., 12.

80 Ibid.

81 James Slack, “PM: WHY WE MUST NOT TAKE 3,000 MIGRANTS”, The Daily Mail, 28 January, 2016. 82 Claire Ellicott, “Hands off our tennis golden girl, Aussies!”, The Daily Mail, 28 January, 2016.

83 Jonathan Charteris-Black, ‘Britain as a container: immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign’, Discourse & Society, 17, No. 5, (2006), 569.

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