Master of Arts Thesis
EurocultureUniversity of Groningen (Home)
University of Udine (Host)
September 2017
Politics and media: separated entities?
A circular process: the relationship between policies,
media and politics. The situation of the Roma, Sinti and
Caminanti groups in the city of Rome
2 Table of contents 1. Introduction 3 1.2. Historical framework 7 1.3. Legal framework 9 2. Theoretical framework 13 2.2. Ethnocentrism 14 2.3. Conceptual Metaphors 17 2.4. Generative metaphor 19
2.5. Agenda-setting, naming and framing 21
3. Methodology 23
4. Analysis 25
4.2. Policy analysis 26
4.2.2. Analysis of Roman policy paper: “Verso il piano Rom,
Roma Capitale 2017” 28
4.3. Analysis of the corpus 33
4.3.2. Layer one: naming 34
4.3.3. Layer two: structure of the articles 38
4.3.4. Layer three: representation of the plot 38
4.3.5. Layer four: frames 39
4.3.6. Layer five: conceptual metaphors 43
4.4. Influence of media on policy 50
5. Conclusion 55
6. Bibliography 58
7. Annexes 64
Annex 1 – Overview of the corpus 64
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1. Introduction
“Nemmeno la presenza degli agenti della polizia locale di Roma Capitale, impegnati questa mattina nel campo nomadi di via di Salone per redigere il censimento degli abitanti voluto dall'amministrazione, ha impedito a un gruppo di nomadi di regolare le proprie faide interne a colpi di spranghe e bastoni. Così, allo scoppiare della rissa, gli agenti hanno chiesto immediatamente rinforzi e in supporto sono intervenute altre pattuglie del gruppo VI Torri e Sicurezza pubblica emergenziale, insieme ai carabinieri della Compagnia di Tivoli,”1
thus the Italian newspaper La Repubblica wrote on January 23, 2017, following an revolt in the nomad camp in Via di Salone housing about 400 members of the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti (RSC) community.2 In the article the author has adopted a certain terminology to describe the situation, such as “nomad camp”, “feuds” and “Public emergency security”. This terminology is broadly adopted and widespread in the Italian written media. The common usage of this terminology is significant, in that it represents the RSC community in a certain, negative, way. This ‘framing’ can aggravate the negative opinion and hostile attitude towards the RSC community that is reflected in the Eurobarometer on racism, reflected in the Eurobarometer on racism (October 2015)3, where is claimed that a staggering 63% of the Italian population feels ‘totally uncomfortable’ having a colleague of Roma background. Furthermore, framing does not merely influence public opinion on the RSC community, as it potentially has the power to influence politics and therefore policies on this very topic.
By cautiously identifying that negative frames lead to a negative attitude towards certain groups, in this case the RSC community, this research can be placed in the broader framework of ethnocentrism, that will address the RSC community as out-group, while labelling the non-RSC community will be labelled as in-group. In this thesis the assumption, deduced from the aforementioned example, of possible influence of media utterances on
1 “Not even the presence of police officers of the local Roman police force, who this morning were
entrusted with the task to arrange the census of the inhabitants of the nomad camp in Via di Salone that was requested by the local government, could prevent a group of nomads from handling their own internal feuds by using iron bars and sticks to hit each other. This led to an immediate call for reinforcement by the police officers. Other patrols of the sixth district and troops for Public security emergencies have intervened, together with police-officers from the municipality of Tivoli.” Translation mine.
2 “Roma, rissa nel campo nomadi di via Salone durante il censimento della polizia locale,”
Repubblica.it, last modified January 23, 2017,
http://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/01/23/news/roma_rissa_nel_campo_nomadi_di_via_salone_durante_il_ce nsimento_della_polizia_locale-156686211/.
3 European Union, European Commission, Special Eurobarometer 437 “Discrimination in the EU in
2015”, (Brussels, October 2015),
4
public opinion will be examined. This assumption will be stretched even further by presuming a possible connection between public opinion and the creation of new policies. The last step that will complete the circle of influence as depicted in figure 1 will be the relationship between policies and media itself. It would be of great importance for both politicians and policy writers to see proven the assumption that the way in which the addressed problem is framed in a policy does, fast forwarding the presumed process, influence the establishment of new policies. This awareness will enable politicians and policy writers to breach this circle by for example establishing more positive frames, that potentially can lead to a more positive representation of a certain issue in the media. In scientific discourse there is no consensus about the presumed interconnectedness between the three pillars of policy, media and politics. Furthermore, it is not clear how these pillars are interwoven in Italian language. This thesis seeks to get to grips with the relationship between politics and policy and how they mutually influence each other.
4
Figure 1
In this thesis I will use discourse analysis specifically focused on discrimination as a method in order to answer the following question: In what way policy, media utterances and
politics are interconnected? In order to answer the main question, I will consider two case
studies: firstly, a fight during a census in the Via di Salone camp on January 23, 2017 and secondly a fire in a camper that cost the life of three girls of romanì origin on May 10th, 2017. These case studies have been chosen since they both have provoked a discussion in the regional, national and international media, leading to a significant number of published articles on the events. Next to this, the case of the Salone camp is clearly linked to the execution of the policy, as will be demonstrated in 4.2, whereas the camper case is linked to
4
Figure 1 depicts the assumed circular influence between the three layers that will be the starting point of this research.
Media
5 the Salone case regarding those who participated in it, two certain families from the RSC community.
Prior to the analysis of the corpus that has been compiled, the policy paper that frames the issues concerning the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community will be considered, given the hypothesis that the way in which the policy frames the problems does influence the depiction of these problems. This will lead to an answer to the first sub-question: How is the problem of
integration of the RSC community shaped in Roman policy? The following step will focus on
answering the second sub-question: How does the media represent occurring events
regarding members of RSC groups? This will be done by focusing on five layers of
representation of the problems For the media analysis, I will focus on the functioning of representation in these written texts that altogether shape a certain idea to present to the readers. The last sub-question that has to be answered in order to make an attempt at answering the main question is: How do politicians respond on events presented in the media
and how does this influence future policies?
The situation of the RSC community has been high on the political agenda since several Eastern and South-Eastern countries announced the decade of Roma inclusion in 2005, which inspired the European Commission to formulate and adopt the EU Framework for National Integration Strategies until 2020 in 2011. This framework serves as an incentive for member states to draw up a tailor-made national policy to implement in their country, according to issues that arise in this national context. This partial freedom is offered to the respective member states since every nation has specific problems concerning the integration of the RSC groups and the comprehensive EU guidelines aim to solve all of these questions. In this thesis I will focus on the representation of members of the RSC community in the Italian media that, as will be explained later on, is influenced by adopted frames and terminology in policies. Therefore, Italian national – as well as regional Roman – policy will form the first core of this research. Italy has presented its national policy on the integration of the RSC community in 2012, in accordance with the four main axes as proposed by the European Framework: education, employment, housing and health.5 This quadrupled structure is also adopted in regional and municipal policies, such as the Piano Rom that Virginia Raggi, the mayor of the city of Rome, has issued in early 2017.
5 European Commission, “Communication from the commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the
European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: An EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020”, Brussels April 5, 2011.
6 The example in the very start of the thesis shows a lexical phenomenon called conceptual metaphor, which is often used in similar researches in order to isolate in what manner a certain case (x) is depicted (y). One of the indicators in order to distillate this analogy are lexical utterances, including terms with negative connotations such as “gypsies” and “clan” or “head of the clan”. It is of vital importance to explain the terminology that will be used in this thesis in order to refer to those people that are often called “gypsies” and “nomad” in the Italian context. Since this group is very heterogeneous, with people from different countries, speaking different languages I have opted to use the broad term of Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community, which is rather all-embracing. Furthermore, terms such as ‘gypsies” and “nomads” are considered to be pejorative and discriminatory by the majority of scholars that are involved in Romani Studies, as explained by Hepworth:
“In both official discourse and everyday Italian language, the term ‘nomad’ is used interchangeably with the word ‘zingaro’ (gypsy). Both ‘zingaro’ and nomad are exonyms, coined by the majority gage (non-Roma) population. However, where they term gypsy may connote a range of negative (and occasionally romantic) stereotypes, such as ‘dirty’ and ‘untrustworthy’, the term ‘nomad’ additionally evokes essentialised cultural practices. In other words, the use of the term ‘nomad’ yokes ethnicity to mobility, rendering invisible and inaudible the majority of Roma and Sinti that are now sedentary by indicating that they are inauthentic of assimilated members of that group.”6
In order to fully grasp the complexity of the situation and the occurring problems, it is important for the reader to form a clear idea of the history of the RSC community in Italy, as well as a detailed notion of how the legal situation has changed over the years. Following this, we will take a short look at policies aimed at the RSC community, before turning to the theoretical framework.
In the theoretical framework we will reflect on the importance of terminology and framing of the RSC community, as well as the crucial role that the media is playing in the process of representation. We will see that, according to Kuypers, the role of the media can be defined as twofold, firstly it strongly influences the opinion of its readers on the discussed question, while secondly media can influence the setting of the political agenda by opting to report a certain issue.7 Furthermore, I will take a look at the functioning of metaphors in
6
Katherine Hepworth, “Abjecting Geographies: Imagining and Inhabiting the ‘Nomad Camp’ in Italy,” in The Politics of Space and Place, ed. Chiara Certomà, Nicola Clewer and Doug Elsey (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 435.
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7 spoken language, as explained in Lakoff and Johnson’s theories on the conceptual metaphor, as well as a theory on generative metaphor by Donal Schön. The proposed theories will be applied to the case-study by conducting a discourse analysis.
1.2 Historical framework
The aim of this sub-chapter is twofold, firstly I would like to provide the reader with a short historical overview of the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community in Italy and secondly I will discuss the development of Italian law that is aimed at this specific group. For the latter, I have chosen to focus on the period from the year 1985 onwards, since this decade marks the start of more attention towards the presence of the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community. Allocating more attention towards this community has unleashed an effect that left its resonance on the legal field echoed on the legal field as well and there have been issued a significant number of International, European and regional laws with regard to the RSC community. 8 This overview will contain a multi-layered variety of legislation, shifting from a European level to a national- and regional level. Knowledge of the legal- and historical background is vital to enable a better understanding of the situation that is questioned in this thesis. Furthermore, the reader has to be aware of the fact that the history of Roma is merely based on the description that have been made by non-Roma, people that do not belong to the group they search to depict. Documents on the history of the RSC community as written by themselves are not known. Given these facts one could conclude that members of RSC groups have been passively present in history, their stories described by others, before they can be regarded as active members of their own history by raising their own voices.
The first documented presence of the Roma in Italy dates back to the summer of 1422, when a group of about a hundred Roma arrived in Bologna, claiming to be stopping over Rome to meet the Pope.9 In the reports of both the city of Bologna and the city of Forlì, these travelers were unclear about their origins. They claimed to be Egyptians in Bologna, while claiming to be Indians in Forlì.10 The first use of the term zengani, the predecessor of the
8
Giovanna Zincone and Tiziana Caponio, IMISCOE Working Paper: Country Report. Immigrant and
immigration policy-making: The case of Italy (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006),
www.imiscoe.org, (accessed December 30, 2016), 5.
9 Angus Fraser, The Gypsies. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 72. 10
Massimo Arese, “Egiziani a Lucca nel Settembre del 1422: Un “nuovo” documento,” in Italia Romaní
– volume quinto: I Cingari nell’Italia dell’antico regime, ed. Massimo Aresu and Leonardo Piasere , Roma:
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contemporary pejorative term zingari can be traced back to that time.11 However, even though the aforementioned group claimed to go to Rome, the first documented presence of Roma in Central Italy (c.q. Rome) was only reported during the 16th century. Members of the RSC group settled down in the wealthy city-states like the Duchy of Milan or the Duchy of Modena in the North of the country currently known as Italy. Here the newcomers were both subjected to, as well as perpetrators of, a lot of violence. In 1506 the Duchy of Milan even issued a decree in which was written that zengani were a public threat, while subsequently banning them from their city. This ban spread like a fire throughout Italy, influencing other cities to declare similar bans. The newcomers were often represented as dangerous others, or even compared to animals leading to a clear division between us and them. These representations have strongly influenced the bans that several cities declared towards members of the RSC community. This happened from the town of Jesi to the duchy of Tuscany, eventually followed by all the Papal States. 12 These rejections of the Roma are one of the first in what will become a long tradition. Between the 16th century and the 20th century, the Roma encountered similar bans and problems throughout Italy, from Bologna and Tuscany, to Sicily and Naples.13 Even though often forgotten, the Roma were also victims during the Second World War, alongside the Jews, disabled and political opponents. At least half a million Roma suffered terribly, being killed in concentration camps, being sterilized or subjected to medical experiments.14 In the racial theories of the Third Reich, the Roma were considered as an inferior race. According to Boursier, Mussolini’s politics can be considered as a surrogate of Hitler’s ideology, meaning that also in Italy the Roma were considered as an inferior race and therefore persecuted.15 However, this very statement by Boursier can be criticized by mentioning that Mussolini’s utterances on the inferiority of the Romanì race have been issued prior to Hitler’s rise to power. In 1926, the Italian Ministry of Internal affairs launched a decree to state that Italy was infiltrated by zingari, followed by a statement that the Italian government wanted to “purify the national Italian territory.”16
From the 1940’s
11
Leonardo Piasere, “First contact: Analisi della Grana Internazionale si trovarono di fronte i Bolognesi nei giorni della Canicola del 1422, e come la risolsero,” in Italia Romaní – volume quinto: I Cingari nell’Italia
dell’antico regime, ed. Massimo Aresu and Leonardo Piasere, Roma: CISU, 2008, 12.
12 Fraser, The Gypsies, 108.
13 Leonardo Piasere, Italia Romanì - volume quinto: I Cingari nell’Italia dell’antico regime, ed. M. Aresu
and L. Piasere (Roma: CISU, 2008), 131.
14 Giovanna Boursier, “Gli zingari nell’Italia fascista,” in Italia Romaní, ed. Leonardo Piasere (Roma:
CISU, 2008), 5.
15
Ibid, 6.
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until the end of the Italian active interference in the Second World War, the zingari problem became more visible and important. A reason for this is the establishment of the Steel Pact between Italy and Germany that subsequently enforced Italy to implement the racial laws of Germany. by enforcing the internment of Italian Roma in Italian concentration camps such as Tossicia in Abruzzo, as well as the extermination of Italian Roma in concentration camps in the Jasenovac camp in Croatia. During the economic crises of the 1960’s and 1970’s, a lot of Roma fled the Balkans to live in Italy. The last but one ‘wave’ of Romani migration was during the 1990’s, as a consequence of the political instability during and in the aftermath of the devastating war in former Yugoslavia, as well as the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern European countries.17 In the 1980’s and the beginning of the 1990’s, half of the Italian regions adopted a law to protect Roma and their nomadic culture. Each region defined the Roma in their region in a slightly different way, according to their regional differences between the residents of that specific area. This process of creating heteronyms was necessary to create laws that would be accepted on a national level, since regional differences in perception and naming made in impossible to create a cohesive national idea of this minority that could be translated into national law. One of the most significant tools used to protect Roma and their culture has been the establishment of special camps for Roma, Sinti and Caminanti.18 Scholars have denounced this decision by stating that creating segregated camps for Roma, Sinti and Caminanti has paved the way for stereotypes and prejudices which continue to survive to this day.19
1.3 Legal developments
The first regional law to protect the “cultural patrimony and identity” of Roma within the region of Lazio has been issued in 1985 (L.R. 24 May 1985, n. 82) and seeks to legally impede any inflictions of the Romani tradition of a nomadic way of living. It is interesting to see that a nomadic way of living is being pictured as a fundamental aspect of the Romani culture, even though this is controversial. On the one hand, nomadism as fundamental aspect
17
Ezio Benedetti and Antonietta Piacquadio, “Analysis of Roma Situation in Italy With Emphasis on Friuli Venezia Giulia and Veneto,” in Tackling Stereotypes and Prejudices between Roma and Non-Roma in the
EU Member States: Bulgaria, Italy, Romania and Slovenia, ed. Silvio Devetak (Maribor: ISCOMET Institute for
Etnic and Regional Studies, 2013), 62.
18 Nando Sigona, “Locating the ‘Gypsy Problem’. The Roma in Italy: Stereotyping, Labelling and
‘Nomad Camps’,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31, no. 4 (2005): 746, accessed April 20, 2016,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691830500109969.
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has been strongly contested by many scholars, while there have been spokesmen of NGO’s that wanted recognition for the nomadic aspect of Romani culture. Even though regional legislation differs from region to region, a national entity has been established to monitor these policies on a national level by so-called ‘Offices of Nomad Affairs’, which on its turn has been placed under the responsibility of the Department of Immigration.20 In 2002 the formal requirements for possessing a valid visa in order to travel to Italy has been dropped with regard to Romanian citizens. Following this, the enlargement of the European Union in 2007 welcomed Romania and Bulgaria to the Union, providing its inhabitants with European citizenship including freedom of movement in the whole Union. This led to a flux of immigrants in the established European Member States, such as Italy. This enlargement can be seen as an indirect trigger for the accentuation of legislation, since the idea of Romanian by definition being “gypsies” is extensive and deeply rooted.21
As a trigger for a stricter legislation one could consider the violent murder of an Italian woman by an inhabitant of a Nomad camp in Rom. The national government, led by Romano Prodi, issued a decree (n.181/2007) that enabled the Italian government to remove EU individuals who could be seen as a threat to the national security.22 In 2008 national elections took place and the elected centre-right government led by Silvio Berlusconi put a lot of emphasis on combatting illegal nomad settlements in order to secure the – Italian – citizens. As part of the Security Packages, a newly issued national decree (n.122/2008) powerfully installed the state of emergency concerning the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti population in the regions of Campania, Lazio and Lombardy regions.23 This Emergenza Nomadi made the issue very visible, leading to an increase of financial support to the then mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno. This so-called “nomad emergency” has been shaped according to existing emergency policies with regard to emergency situations that can possibly result from or caused by natural disasters, which will allow and justify public authorities to “practically derogate from every provision of law and
20
ERRC, “Security a la Italiana: fingerprinting, extreme violence and harassment of Roma in Italy,” European Roma Rights Centre, 2008, accessed 25 May 2017,
http://www.errc.org/cms/upload/file/m00000428.pdf, 12.
21
Katherine Hepworth, “Abjecting Geographies: Imagining and Inhabiting the ‘Nomad Camp’ in Italy,” in The Politics of Space and Place, ed. Chiara Certomà, Nicola Clewer and Doug Elsey (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 438.
22
Nando Sigona, “The Problema ‘Nomadi’ vis-à-vis the Political Participation of Roma and Sinti at the Local Level in Italy,” in Romani Politics in Contemporary Europe: Poverty, Ethnic Mobilization and the
Neoliberal Order, ed. Nando Sigona and Nidhi Trehan (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 272-273.
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other regulations that apply under normal conditions.”24
The proliferation of tense situations that have been described throughout this chapter caught the attention of the European Council in 2008, when it was addressed in particular during a Council meeting. Following this, the European Council strongly recommended the European Commission to develop a comprehensive framework to tackle discrimination against members of the RSC community, as well as paving the way for a better integration in specific Member States.25 Culminating in the presentation of the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies26 in 2011, urging every European Member State to write a tailor-made national policy according to guidelines framed in the EU framework. In order to monitor improvements, stagnation or decline, the European Commission assesses this national policy every year.
According to contemporary scholars the labelling of Roma – whether defined as Roma, Sinti, Kale, Manouche, Travelers or otherwise – as nomads, abject citizens and ‘unproductive’ has created the legal framework of Italy and other European States, as well as justifying the way in which the target group is assisted, regulated or managed.27 According to Hepworth, Italy’s policy towards the RSC community could be characterised as a policy that tries to safeguard and preserve the ‘nomadic’ character of the community. In practice this means that Italian national, regional and local governments seek to provide spaces that are dedicated to these nomads, creating a call for them to only settle in these camps.28 This assumption leads to a limitation of spaces where Roma, Sinti and Caminanti can camp, subsequently to both spatial and social segregation.29 In this sense we could argue that the assumption of a nomadic character of the RSC community has both shaped and justified Italian policy.30 Furthermore, the Security Package of 2008 contained a plan to collect fingerprints of every inhabitant of Nomad camps throughout the country, minors included. Furthermore, in order to effectively monitor the camps, authorities were allowed to take mug shots, clearing camps and evicting its inhabitants as well as opening new camps.31 Strikingly,
24 ERRC, “Security a la Italiana: fingerprinting, extreme violence and harassment of Roma in
Italy,” European Roma Rights Centre, 2008, accessed 25 May 2017,
http://www.errc.org/cms/upload/file/m00000428.pdf, 16.
25 Will Guy, “EU Initiatives on Roma: Limitations and Ways Forward,” in Romani Politics in
Contemporary Europe: Poverty, Ethnic Mobilization, and the Neoliberal Order, ed. Nando Sigona and Nidhi
Tredhan (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 25.
26
For the European Framework please see:
http://register.consilium.europa.eu/doc/srv?l=EN&f=ST%2010658%202011%20INIT.
27 Hepworth, “Abjecting Geographies”, 434. 28 Ibid., 435.
29
Ibid., 435.
30 Leonardo Piasere, I Rom d’Europa, (Rome: Laterza, 2008).
12
in this case Italian court ruled that these allegedly discriminatory measurements were non-discriminatory towards the RSC community, since “all gypsies were thieves,” which justified the policy.32 This court ruling has been contradicted by a 2015 court ruling that labelled nomad camps as contrary to Italian law, enforcing local governments to provide a different kind of housing to the inhabitants of these camps.
To give an example of a nomad camp in Italy, I will use the La Barbuta settlement, located close to Rome’s Ciampino Airport, is one of the biggest settlements for “Roma only” that was originally established in 1995 as a tolerated camp under the centre-left government of mayor Rutelli. The camp accommodated 580 people of the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community who’s previous camps had been cleared. His successor, the centre-right mayor Gianni Alemanno (2008-2013) transformed the status of the camp into a villaggio di solidarietà33. A new law (Order 4/2010) formally established this La Barbuta settlement as a provisionary solution to the housing. During the mandate (2013-2015) of the centre-left mayor Ignazio Marino its status was questioned again, which led to removing the newly established status and discussing its closing down while accommodating the inhabitants in a settlement that still had to be constructed.34 Despite the Italian court that ruled in 2015 that La Barbuta is violating several national, European and International laws and conventions and is therefore a form of segregation and discrimination undertaken by the government, this judgment has not led to a concrete abolition of the camp and until today the La Barbuta settlement still exists.35 During the electoral campaign for a new mayor in Rome, the Five Stars Party has expressed that overcoming the nomad camps in Rome is one of their priorities.36 After the election of mayor Virginia Raggi, the candidate for the Five Stars Movement, in October 2016, the counsel has faced several difficulties and has received a lot of critique with regard to not complying with their electoral promises. Recently, on May 31st, 2017 Raggi announced a new plan to gradually overcome nomad camps and promised that these plans are in line with the national and European legislation as well as with International
Italy,” European Roma Rights Centre, 2008, accessed 25 May 2017, http://www.errc.org/cms/upload/file/m00000428.pdf, 16.
32 Guy, “EU Initiatives on Roma”, 25. 33 Village of solidariety, translation mine.
34 Associazione 21 Luglio, “Terminal Barbuta. Il << villaggio della solidarietà>> La Barbuta a Roma. Presente e futuro di un “campo” per soli rom,” Rome, October 2014, accessed May 18, 2017,
http://www.21luglio.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/TerminalBarbuta_web_ridotto.pdf, 4. 35 Ibid., 8.
36 “Politiche sociali: 11 passi per portare Roma il cambiamento di cui ha bisogno,” Movimento 5 Stelle, accessed June 1, 2017,
13
treaties, such as the European Convention on Human Rights.37 The whole process of overcoming the camps is estimated to take two years, closing the camps one by one, approaching every family separately in order to reach a solution and find an accommodation for them.38 The presentation of the new Nomad Plan has led to a flood of critique from several interest groups, such as the Italian NGO Associazione 21 luglio, whose president has claimed that the current plan is based on a lack of information as well as a lack of strategy.39
2. Theoretical Framework
In this thesis I will consider bias in press by using the method of discourse analysis linked to racism, minorities and ethnocentrism, in order to clarify the relationship between policies, utterances in media and its subsequent link back to the political field, whereupon this very process can commence anew. Discourse analysis will be used to distillate literal pejorative expressions, as well as at figurative negative utterances such as the use of the generative and conceptual metaphors, as coined by Donald Schön and Lakoff and Johnson. The chapter will comprise the theories that will be adopted in order to define what is considered to be a negative lexical utterance in the press-articles that concerning the revolt in the Via di Salone camp in Rome on January 27th, 2016, as well as a fatal fire of a camper that led to the death of three girls of Romanì decent in the night of May 10th, 2017.
As a starting point I will elaborate on the broadest frame in which this thesis is set: ethnocentrism. This is highly relevant, since the theories that will follow have to be regarded from this specific ethnocentric perspective in which frames and concepts as presented by Lakoff & Johnson and Kuypers are determined. Following the setting of the broad frame in which the research is embedded, I will introduce the theory on conceptual metaphors as coined by Lakoff and Johnsons’, which in short states that the surrounding, or concepts, of a
38
Rinaldo Frignani, “Roma, i fondi europei per dare lavoro e casa ai nomadi: è polemica,” Corriere della
Sera, May 31, 2017, accessed June 1, 2017,
http://roma.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/17_maggio_31/rom-sindaca-vara-nuovo-piano-casa-lavoro-fondi-europei-85428cb0-461c-11e7-9b23-80b3b0be0a6c.shtml.
39 “Piano superamento “campi rom” di Roma Capitale: «fallimento annunciato» secondo Associazione
21 luglio,” Associazione 21 luglio, last modified May 31, 2017,visited June 2, 2017,
14
speaker is of vital importance when analysing the verbal utterances of this speaker. 40 Following this, I will turn to Schön’s theory on the generative metaphor, since he has elaborated on the theory of Lakoff and Johnson. Schön’s theory will be used in order to analyse the regional roman policy on the integration of the RSC community. Although the lack of integration concerning the RSC community is not bound to just Italy and multi-layered in itself (European level, national level and regional or local level), I have opted to focus on the analysis of only a regional policy since this is of the utmost importance while analysing the media utterances on the chosen event that occurred in the city of Rome. The last part of the theoretical framework will focus on the way in which Jim A. Kuypers tries to look for bias in press, by looking at parts of speeches that are used in the press, what he does by analysing the original speech and look at the frame in which it is put. Furthermore, I will define what the utopian function of media is and in what way we want press to function, according to Doris Graber, a renowned professor on the field of political science and communication. In his book Kuypers has combined theories and practical examples of speech analysis in order to deliver a comprehensive work on the processes of framing of controversial issues in the media. Even though the whole volume is interesting, for my research I will focus on the theories that are the most relevant for my thesis: the framing theory and agenda setting theory
as explained by Kuypers.
2.2 Ethnocentrism
As I mentioned before, the thesis will be set in the broad framework of ethnocentrism, which will be the perspective from which the following theories have to be considered. The focus of the thesis concerns the RSC community, a minority within the Italian and Roman society. Estimated by the European Union is that there are living 150.000 to 180.000 Roma, Sinti and Caminanti in Italy, making up only 0,25% of the total Italian population.41 Even though there is often put a lot of emphasis on problems and issues that arise concerning the RSC community, as I will attempt to show in the analysis, the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community is not the biggest minority living in the municipality of Rome. The Oxford Dictionary defines minorities as “a small group of people within a community or country,
40 Jim A. Kuypers, Press Bias and Politics. How the Media Frame Controversial Issues, (Westport: Praeger
Publishers, 2002), 3.
41
European Commission, “The European Union and Roma: Factsheet Italy,” Brussels: April 2014,
15
differing from the main population in race, religion, language, or political persuasion,” which confirms that a minority is a very broad term. However, I have opted to isolate ethnic minorities from the extensive definition that has been put before in order to link minorities to the ideology of ethnocentrism. Setting the thesis in the broad framework of ethnocentrism is relevant for this thesis where lexical utterances are considered as the most important clues in order to distillate frames and subsequently metaphors.
Ethnocentrism, according to German philosopher and sociologist Theodor W. Adorno, can be defined as a “complex of attitudes, consisting of positive attitudes toward the ethnic in-group and negative attitudes toward ethnic out-in-groups”.42 This definition already gives us an indication about possible manifestations of racism, or at least negative opinions on those belonging to an alleged out-group, which in this case concerns the RSC community in Rome. The first use of the very term is attributed to the American scholar William Graham Sumner who described ethnocentrism as a perspective in which one’s own group, the so-called in-group, is the centre of everything. All the other groups, the so-called out-groups, are both considered and subsequently rated with reference to one’s in-group. Every group cultivates its own feelings of pride and vanity, praises its superiority with regard to other groups, glorifies its own divinities and looks with boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and disdains those belonging to other groups.43 The practical functioning of these two explanations of the concept of ethnocentrism are both reflected in the corpus that will be analysed in the following chapter. The processes that are described by both Sumner and Adorno explain why people tend to stay within their self-defined groups and rarely establish prolonged relationships with people that belong to another group, or from their perspective ‘the out-group’.44
This attitude is likely to stabilize sentiments of segregation between groups and can foster negative manifestations and racism that are both based on the lack of information. In my opinion, the current situation in Rome, with members of the RSC community living in camps outside of the city centre is a good example of this phenomenon that is called ethnic segregation. Linked to ethnic segregation one can define the issue of ethnic distance, which describes the tendency to avoid social contact with other (often ethnic) groups, such as minorities.45 Both ethnic segregation and ethnic distance feed feelings of incomprehension and become more productive by collecting these feelings, which will eventually produce a
42
Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian
Personality (New York: Harper, 1950), p.150.
43 Capucao, Religion and Ethnocentrism, 167. 44
Ibid.,
16
vicious circle and a process that is hard to breach.
It is interesting to enquire on which the concept of ethnocentrism is based, and moreover, how these sentiments of diversity are established and subsequently are diffused. One theory that attempts to clarify ethnocentrism is the social-theory that has been issued by Tajfel and Turner.46 They claim that human beings are likely to categorize others into in-groups, to which they belong themselves, and out-in-groups, which is a collective meant for those who do not belong to the in-group, the others. This categorization between ‘us’ and ‘not us’ or ‘them’ can be made on the basis of numerous grounds, for example, gender, ethnicity, religion, political preference, etcetera. By distinguishing between ‘us’ and ‘not-us’ in one’s own social environment human beings try to attain a more positive idea of self-esteem. By imputing positive traits on themselves (social identification), and by ascribing others negative traits (social contra-identification), the boost of someone’s self-esteem is boosted twofold.47
The link between ethnocentrism and language can be found by referring to the Sapir-Whorf theory of the renowned linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Sapir-Whorf, who further developed the theory. This hypothesis claims that language influences how its speaker perceives the world. Edward Sapir mentioned that:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone... but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.48
Following this theory, one could conclude that language is a tool for the society that uses that specific language. Yet, every language speaks about similar concepts in a different way, even though the meanings might seem equal, they are not. In the case of this research, one could therefore conclude that that negative verbal utterances that are expressed in Italian create a negative perception of the case that is considered for the Italian speaking society only. The link with ethnocentrism could be established by mentioning that Sapir-Whorf’s theory is also establishing an in- and an out-group that is or is not effected by the linguistic expressions. A
46
Henri Tajfel and John Turner, “An integrative theory of intergroup conflict,” in The social psychology of
intergroup relations, ed. William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (Monterrey: Brooks/Cole, 1979).
47 Eisinga, R. & Scheepers, P. (1989). Etnocentrisme in Nederland. Theoretische en Empirische Modellen.
Dissertation. Nijmegen: KUN, 239
48 David G. Mandelbaum and Edward Sapir, Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and
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parallel reasoning can be descried when looked at ethnocentrism from an anthropological perspective.
2.3. Conceptual metaphors
George Lakoff is an American cognitive scientist and linguist who worked at Berkeley University California where he has conducted several researches, for instance with regard the influence of metaphors on the lives individuals on the socio-political field. This theory has been researched into great depth together with Mark Lakoff, a professor in cognitive sciences, linguistics from the University of Oregon, who has also contributed to research on the field of ethics and philosophy. In their article written in 1980, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain how metaphors regulate our way of thinking, perceiving and acting. They start by claiming that the notion that a metaphor is a mere aesthetic instrument is a fallacy, by arguing that our entire conceptual communication is metaphorical in its nature. We are unaware of the fact that our conceptual system makes us think along certain lines. These concepts are not just matters of intellect, rather they will define how one perceives the world, who we speak and how we communicate with others. As the concepts in fact determine and regulate the incoming impulses one takes in, they have a major influence on the way we perceive the world as well as on how we relate to other people.49 This statement could be clearly linked to the aforementioned Sapir-Whorf theory and ethnocentrism, since Lakoff and Johnson have accepted that language does define our world and create our lexical expressions.
However, as mentioned before, this conceptual frame is not something that we are aware of even though it structures our daily lives. We rather act automatically along these lines that we have constructed unconsciously. A way to find out what these lines are is to look closely at the language that we use, because, according to Lakoff and Johnson, our verbal communication “is based on the same conceptual system in terms of which we think and act, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.”50
In order to explain how these processes work, Lakoff and Johnson use the example “argument is war”; we structure an argument as a war, something you can both win and lose. The person you are talking to is an opponent, you will try to demolish his arguments, etcetera. They whole idea of thinking about an argument as a war also structures the language that is
49 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, “Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language,” Journal of Philosophy 77, no.8 (1980): 454.
18
used to describe steps a person takes or actions he makes. Thus, this implies that a concept can be shaped as a metaphor. Despite the parallels in the verbal discourses, the difference between actions conducted in terms of war or in terms of an argument – an armed conflict versus a discussion – are indisputable. Following this, Lakoff and Johnson conclude that the concept is metaphorically structured, leading to a metaphorically structured activity. These two premises are logically followed by the conclusion that language is metaphorically structured as well.51 However, the abovementioned frame of argument is war is only true in a certain society, namely ours, where it is normal to understand an argument in terms of war, but it can be understood differently in different cultures.
Since our language is affected by these metaphorical expressions, while simultaneously tied to metaphorical concepts in a systematic way, this enables us to grasp the metaphorical nature of our behaviour by analysing the metaphorical concepts of a society that we are part of.52
As these aforementioned concepts shape our idea of reality, they are also capable of putting a focus on a certain aspect, making other aspects of the reality, in this sense the argument, invisible and fade into the background. In other words, they can shape our reality.53 Within different situations our language can provoke a variety of meanings and connotations, which is strongly linked to the setting of the verbal utterance. We feel that an understanding of conventional metaphor and the way that metaphor structures our ordinary conceptual system will ultimately provide a new "experientialist" perspective on classical philosophical problems, such as the nature of meaning, truth, rationality, logic, and knowledge. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.54
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2.3 Generative metaphors
Donald A. Schön (1930-1997) was an American philosopher and professor on the field of urban planning who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the article that will be used in this research he explores the functioning of the generative metaphor in social policy and social housing policy in particular. Analysing Rome’s regional policy on effectively stimulating the integration of the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community will serve as theoretical back bone in order to answer the first part of my research question, as it would be interesting to see which processes are present within this social policy. Schön proposes a definition that puts the notion of the metaphor central in one’s perception of the world, since it determines “how we think about things, make sense of reality and set the problems we later try to solve.”55
Thus, a generative metaphor is a concept in our perception which is being framed by – personal – views on society.
Metaphors are both referring to a perspective or frame and a process that arouses new perspectives of the world, the latter confirms the literal translation of the term generative metaphor, as provoking new perspectives on the world can be seen as productive. A generative metaphor is a certain type of “SEEING-AS, the meta-pherein or carrying over of frames or perspectives from one domain of experience to another.”56 In conclusion a metaphor is able to untangle a situation of chaos, to organize and set frames which reveal a direction in which possible solutions can be found. Within the tradition of a generative metaphor, Schön distinguishes two central puzzles. The first issue concerns the interpretation of texts in its broadest sense, where it is of great importance to bear in mind that the making of interpretations is affected by inferences. Secondly, Schön mentions the concept of generativity and the process which provokes to see certain things in different or new ways. Schön opens his consideration of the generative metaphor by claiming that within the field of social policies, amongst which also the European, national and Italian policies concerning the integration of the RSC community can be counted, the focus is put merely on problem-shooting. This implies that occurring events are indeed framed as problems. However, he proposes a different approach towards the development of social policies by noting that difficulties that arise in social policies have more to do with problem setting rather than problem solving. The selection of tools to achieve the wished outcome play a subsidiary part,
55
Donald A. Schön, “Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social policy,” in Metaphor and
Thought, 2nd ed. Andrew Ortony (1979; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 137.
20
while the way in which the eventual outcomes are framed are of greater importance.57 Problem settings are communicated by the stories that individuals use to describe problematic situations, in this case within social policies. In these situations the focal point is the framing of problems that need to be solved as stated by the interlocutor.58 According to Schön the framing of problem often hinges on the metaphors that are underlying the stories that bring about the problem setting and, importantly, determine in which direction possible problem solving can be found. He uses the example of framing problems within social services as “fragmentation” and the prescription of “coordination” as the remedy to solve the problem. Indeed, this approach on problematic situations in social policy setting can be found in the yearly evaluation of the national Italian policy considering the integration of Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community too. The European Commission’s yearly report on the integration concluded the following:
Italy has made limited progress in 2015 addressing the commitments taken through the European Framework and the 2013 Council Recommendation on effective Roma integration measures. The main issue is the lack of strategic guidance and coordination at national level. Overcoming the camps-system should be carried out within an integrated approach addressing simultaneously challenges in the areas of education, employment and health. A mechanism of monitoring should be considered.59
In this example the European Commission frames the problem as a lack of strategic guidance and coordination, while implicitly and urgently stressing the need for more coordination as the direction for problem solving. Schön uses the metaphor of a vase, where being fragmented is considered as bad and being coordinated, or whole is considered as good.60 It is only by constructing this metaphor that one can see whether a certain solution can be considered as appropriate.
According to Schön “each story constructs its view of social reality through a complementary process of naming and framing.”61, meaning that the way in which a problem is framed creates a certain view of reality and represents a seeing. Following this notion, Schön conclude that the way in which stories and problems are framed influence the guiding
57 Ibid., 138.
58
Ibid.
59 European Commission, “Assessing the implementation of the EU Framework for National Roma Integration
Strategies and the Council Recommendation on Effective Roma integration
Measures in the Member States 2016: Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions,” The European
Commission, June 2016, http://ec.europa.eu/justice/discrimination/files/roma-report-2016_en.pdf, 67.
60
Schön, “Generative metaphor”, 138.
21
of the legislation process and the formation of policies. Generative metaphors are strongly tied to ones set of moral values and beliefs, which in itself are culturally determined. The normative power of a metaphor, the power of dividing cases in good or bad, derives from this set of moral beliefs.”62
2.5 Framing, priming and agenda-setting
Prior to moving on to his theory, it is of great importance to find a suitable definition for the concept frame, since we need to try to establish a connection between aforementioned metaphors and frames. There are many theories and definitions about frames, Kuypers regards framing as “the process whereby communicators act - consciously or not - to construct a particular point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be viewed in a particular manner, with some facts made more or less noticeable (even ignored) than others.”63 Whereas Van den Hoven adds the layer of inviting the audience in order to construct this point of view, making the process of framing a more active process since the audience has to be addressed.64 Van den Hoven also mentions that frames can occur in different forms, for example in images, stories and one-liners and are able to activate prototypes.65 After having established a definition of what is considered as framing, it is important to construct a link between these frames and the metaphors as presented by Lakoff and Johnson and subsequently Schön. Schön is precise in his explanation of the link between metaphors and frames, by claiming that the framing of problems are generated by metaphors.66 Following the link proposed by Schön, Kuypers concretizes the established connection by mentioning that framing issues as problems leads to the rise of this subject on the political agenda.67
Kuypers aims to “understand and chart the potential effects the printed press – and by extension, broadcast media – have upon the messages of political and social leaders when they discuss controversial issues.”68
This is closely linked to his proposed theory on agenda-setting, that explains how press reports interact with political discourse and public perceptions
62 Ibid., 147.
63 Jim A. Kuypers, Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in action (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009), 182. 64 Paul van den Hoven, Gold Mining: The Art of Rhetorical Discourse Analysis (Xiamen: Xiamen University
Press, 2015), 295.
65 Ibid., 300.
66 Schön, “Generative metaphor”, 139. 67
Kuypers, Press Bias and Politics, 5.
22
of that discourse.69 Kuypers states that media is able to influence the political agenda as well as influence what people tend to find important and even how they prioritise occurring matters. Following this, Kuypers concludes that the bigger the amount of time spend on the reporting of a certain issue, the bigger the chance of the depiction of the issue as a crisis, which leads to more attention allocated to the issue on the political agenda.70 This theory is affirmed and elaborated by Michael B. Salwen who states that policy makers “will address issues only when these issues are perceived as crises by the public.”71
Kuypers remarks the following about the neutrality of facts: “Facts remain neutral until framed; thus, how the press frames an issue or event will affect public understanding of that issue or event.”72
The idea of framing as fact is further developed by William A. Gamson, a sociologist, who states that facts are determined by their environment. This implies in what way are facts presented, in which manner facts or stories accompany these facts, adding information and, not in the last place, what language is used to put the fact. As a continuation on these ideas on framing, Graber interprets the process of framing as agenda-building, since the type of journalism she calls manipulative journalism raises several questions such as philosophical and ethical questions.73 Kuypers moves beyond this theory and attaches the influencing of public opinion to the process of agenda-building, forming it into a concept he calls agenda-extension which he describes as “the role the media play in focusing the public’s attention on a particular object or issue over another object or issue, primarily by how much attention the media gives to that object or issue.”74 This implies that the continuous focussing of the media on a certain object or issues creates the prioritizing of this object of issue in national thought.
To connect the concepts of conceptual metaphors to agenda-setting, priming and framing one could look at Pan and Kosicki who suggested that every story in the media has a central theme that “functions as the central organizing idea”75 which can be linked to the conceptual representation of issues in the media: e.g. argument is war – revolt in nomad camp – disruption of public order or nomads conducting illegal acts. Furthermore, according to Pan
69
Ibid., 4.
70 Ibid., 5.
71 Michael B. Salwen, “News Media and Public Opinion: Benign Agenda-Setters? Opinion Molders? Or Simply
Irrelevant?,” Florida Communication Journal 18, no. 2 (1990): 17.
72 Kuypers, Press Bias and Politics, 7.
73 Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and America Politics, (Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1989),
278.
74
Kuypers, Press Bias and Politics, 8.
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and Kosicki these cues, or conceptual representations, stimulate readers to both understand and interpret news in a specific manner.76 Cues within themes are lexical choices of codes and in that way they could be seen as codes that are being used by news-makers in order to construct a certain news discourse, leading to the conclusion that these cues work as frames.77 Thus, lexical choice is of vital importance concerning the categorization of the way one frames and understands a certain issue. Lexical choice is a logical continuation of personal preferences of the writer, implying that avoiding any impartiality is difficult. Moreover, Kuypers mentions that the power of media especially manifests itself in times of crisis or emergency situations, to which the events that are considered in this thesis can also be counted, by promoting national interest and stimulating certain behaviours. 78 This process of manipulation of the readers attributes a large role to the media with regard to both agenda-forming and agenda-setting, which in itself will be used to manipulate politics.79
3. Methodology
By applying discourse analysis on the corpus, I hope to reveal the processes that emerge by framing a certain event from an ethnocentric perspective. As discourse analysis is a very extensive tool to analyse, I will narrow my method down to the more specific discourse analysis of racism, as explained by Ruth Wodak & Martin Reisigl and Teun A. van Dijk. In the theoretical framework I have stated that the broadest perspective from which I will consider the central question of my thesis will be ethnocentrism. Even though ethnocentrism and racism cannot be considered as equivalents, there are several analogies between them that can justify the use of discourse analysis of racism. Wodak and Reisigl have observed that the meaning of the word racism underwent both a shift as a broadening in its meaning by stating that “[…] the meaning of ‘racism’ has become extraordinarily expanded and evasive. There is a talk of a ‘genetic,’ ‘biological,’ ‘cultural,’ ‘ethnopluralist,’ […] racism.”80
This ethnopluralist racism attempts to legitimise and justify segregation and discrimination by making the claim that the existing of more cultures in one geographical position threatens the
76 Zhongdan Pan and Gerald M. Kosicki, “Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse,” Political
Communication 10, no. 1 (1993): 55-75.
77 Kuypers, Press Bias and Politics, 10.
78 Dominic A. Infante, Andrew S. Rancer and Deanna F. Womack, Building Communication Theory, second
edition (Prospect Hights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1993), 397.
79 Graber, Mass Media and America Politics, 277.
80
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prevalent ethnical culture.81 In my opinion, this type of racism is reflected in the justification of the segregation the RSC community in the nomad camps often outside of the urban area. According to this citation of Alberto Memmi, “racism refers to the generalised and absolute evaluation of real or fictitious differences that is advantageous to the ‘accuser’ and detrimental to his or her victim,”82
which means, when applied to the situation of this thesis, that the out-group, the Gadjé 83 distillate differences between them and the in-group, the members of the RSC community. As an example of this differences between both groups we could consider housing – living in camps versus living in houses -, or culture – Italian versus non-Italian or ‘Roma-culture’ –. Furthermore, this opinion is shared by Van Dijk who presents a strategy for discourse analysis called the context model. Within this model he distinguishes between event models and context models, which he both characterises as being personal and not shared by a group. However, his control system links a positive self-presentation of the in-groups to an already existing negative attitude towards out-groups.84 The importance of the lexical utterances in politics is often overlooked, yet they should not be perceived as a neutral medium that expresses ideas that are independently formed, but rather as “an institutionalised structure of meanings that channels political thought and action in certain directions.”85 This leads to the need to closely examine the processes of derogative metaphors and frames are constructed, as well as exploring in what way the use of both can influence agenda-setting. In this research I will make an attempt to make the aforementioned processes visible by analysing semantic utterances, words standing alone, or as part of a sentence or short story. The first part of my analysis will consist of a thorough consideration of the a policy document concerning the RSC community as issued by the municipality of Rome in January 2017. This will be done by considering generative metaphors as coined by Donald Schön. Furthermore, I will look at frames that are present in the policy paper by using theories from Kuypers.
In this second part of my analysis I will assess eleven articles talking about two events, the revolt in the Via Salone camp during a census on January 23rd 2017 and the burn down of camper that caused the death of three girls of the RSC community on May 10th 2017. These
81
Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination. Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. (London: Routledge, 2001), 10.
82
Alberto Memmi, Rassismus. (Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 103.
83
Gadje is the plural form (singular masculine: gadjo, feminine: gadji) of the word that is generally used to refer to people that do not belong to the group of Roma.
84
Wodak and Reisigl, “Discourse and Racism,” 380.
85
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articles taken from different media sources. The articles will be analysed on five levels: naming, the structure of the article, the plot, present frames and lastly on the metaphorical level. Eventually, this analysis will help to answer the question in what way policy influences media and politics in the specific situation of the RSC community in Rome. The articles that will be considered are taken from a diverse range of sources, from leading newspapers such as La Repubblica, Il Messaggero and Corriere della Sera to online news sources such as Il Quotidiano and Roma Today.
As a starting point I will closely consider the semantic utterances and the terminology that is used in every article. This is an essential step in order to thoroughly understand the perspective from which the article is written and the frames and metaphors that are being used. The process of naming can be understood as the verbal act of assigning names to people or objects in order to address them. In the second and third layers, I will distinguish the plot of every article that will summarise the facts of the article, as well as the way in which these facts are structured. It will be interesting to see which facts are mentioned, since they can frame the article. The importance of the structure is lying in the presentation of the facts. The frequency of a mentioned fact puts emphasis on the importance, as well as the place where the fact is mentioned. A fact cited in the title is framed as more important than a fact cited in the lead, a fact cited in the lead is framed as more important than a fact cited in the full text, etc. The fourth layer will consist of the deduction of frames that are presented in the articles, whereas the fifth layer will indicate the underlying conceptual metaphors. The last part of my analysis will consider the last sub-question and will descry the way in which media utterances provoke reactions from politicians to subsequently influence the making of a new policy concerning the topic of RSC integration.
4. Analysis
26
composed around two central events. Lastly, the third part will focus on the responses that have arisen from the political field after these two events.
4.2. European, national and Roman policy papers regarding the RSC community
The starting point for the analysis of my thesis will be the policy paper regarding the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community as published by the council of ministers during the mandate of Virginia Raggi, a member of the Five Stars Movement.86 During the campaign, one of the main spearheads of the Five Star Movement was their intention to overcome the nomad camps as they are still present in Italy.87 In this sub chapter we will consider the so-called piano rom as it has been published on January 4th, 2017. This plan has to be in line with the treaties of the European Union that Italy has ratified, as well as with the Declaration of Human Rights, the Italian constitution and the Charter of the municipality of Rome. Firstly, I will talk about the process of creating a national Roma integration strategy and the critique that Italy has been getting from different sides. Secondly, we will consider the roma plan by analysing the steps that the municipality proposes in order create a better integration of the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti minority into the Roman society.
In 2011 the European Union has issued the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies, an incentive in which the European Commission enforces Member States to create a tailor-made national strategy in order to foster better integration of the Roma, Sinti and Caminanti community into national societies.88 This has led to the establishment of an Italian Framework for the Inclusion of Roma, Sinti and Caminanti in 2012.89 The name of this EU project as a framework for integration strategies is could be seen as a frame as such. The word strategy could be linked to army or police operations, that are often also framed as strategies to combat something that is undesired. Thus, in this situation the integration of the Roma are framed as something that has to be achieved by seeing the operation as a police of army operation. Another clear case of framing is the way mayor Alemanno has named a nomad camp, namely villaggio di solidarietà, which can be translated
86 Movimento Cinque Stelle.
87 Giunta Capitolina, Verso il Piano Rom: Roma Capitale 2017. Rome, January 4, 2017, 3.
88 Council of the European Union, An EU Framework For National Roma Integration Strategies Up To 2020:
Council Conclusions. Brussels, 24 May, 2011, 4.
89
