Diversity in the media: The case of the refugees’ representation in the Greek newspapers at a time of crisis

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a sharply distorted perception of the refugee and migration phenomenon. Due to the media's often skewed presentation of the separate issues of immigration and refugee, many have difficulty even understanding the definitions of these two situations. Citizens cannot perceive the difference between immigration as a choice and being refugee as a one-way street and coercion. As a result, citizens consider the boundaries of the two situations indistinguishable. The present study investigates the way in which refugees and immigrants are represented in the Greek press, in times of crisis. Through a comparative study on the front pages of Greek political newspapers, we seek to analyze how this news is covered and mainly how refugees and immigrants are portrayed by Greek journalists. The research question is whether a newspaper's political positions influence the way it portrays refugees. Methodologically, the study is based on the framing theory, which has become a dominant tool for describing, understanding and evaluating media content. The idea of the research is partly based on Hall's positions (1981: 64, 87) that the media “not only distort reality, but also define it”.