Solidarity in the Media and Public Contention over Refugees in Europe

Of the many crises that Europe faces today, the so-called ‘refugee crisis' is the
one that has had a profound impact on public debates about solidarity, reinvigorating contestations and divisions within and between European member countries (Krastev, 2017b). Since 2015, huge fault lines have opened up across the European Union about the question of how this ‘crisis' should be handled and what the responsibility of European countries and populations is in regard to the provision of humanitarian aid and assistance. While most research has focused on migration movements and policy and security implications, there has been little sustained and comparative analysis of how public attitudes towards refugees and humanitarian dispositions are shaped within the public sphere by political news coverage of the ‘crisis' (Agustín and Jørgensen, 2018; Barlai et al., 2017). Sociological research in the field of communication studies, in turn, has mainly focused on the representation of refugees in the media, but less on how discourses and contestations of solidarity in European receiving countries inform, through the media, policy responses and public attitudes towards refugees
[Abingdon: 2021]

Compartir: