1. To what extent does the language used by the media play a significant
role in Europe’s Refugee Crisis?
Angus Muir
Independent Learning Project

2. To what extent does the language used by the media play a significant role in
Europe’s Refugee Crisis?
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Table of contents
Introduction 3
General overview of language 4
Refugee vs. Migrant 5
Right vs. Left 6
The turning point 8
Media impact on refugees 11
Conclusion 12
References 13

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Introduction
Migration is part of the human condition. Ever since humankind emerged
out of East Africa, it has been on the move – searching for a better climate,
looking for supplies of food and water, finding security and safety. The stream
of refugees fleeing the war in Syria has been one of this year’s defining and
most complicated news stories, with television screens and newspapers filled
with stories about the appalling loss of life and suffering of thousands of people
escaping conflict. As the conflict escalated, and the humanitarian disaster with
it, creating the biggest refugee crisis in our generation, the appeals for wider
media attention, with some notable exceptions, fell on deaf ears with an
apparent lack of interest on the part of the vast majority of television and radio
companies and major newspapers.
For decades the issue of immigration has been a toxic and divisive
political issue in the United Kingdom and in 2015, in the wake of the European-
wide migration crisis, the debate around asylum and refugees became highly
charged, volatile and polemical. The print and broadcastmedia in the United
Kingdom cover only a very narrow range of migration stories, primarily
focusing on asylum seekers, refugees, illegal immigrants, and migrant workers.
The media use a ‘template’ to frame stories about migration. These frames
generally conflate all migration with asylum, make the migrant the victim and
the object, and show migration as a problem and a perpetual crisis. This
influences policy monitoring and reform as there is a co-operation between the
media and policy: politicians, media and academics provide the language for
talking about immigration and thus set the agenda and frame the stories. A
certain policy focus is transmitted from government to media, and the stories
that the media produceare then fed back into policy discourse.
The conclusions from many different parts of the world are remarkably
similar: journalism under pressure from a weakening media economy; political
bias and opportunism that drives news agenda; the dangers of hate-speech,
stereotyping and social exclusion of refugees and migrants. But at the same time
there have been inspiring examples of careful, sensitive and ethical journalism
that have shown empathy for the victims. In most countries, including the UK,
the story has been dominated by two themes – numbers and emotions. Most of
the time coverage is politically led with media often following an agenda
dominated by loose language and talk of “invasion” and “swarms”. At other
moments, the story has been laced with humanity, empathy and a focus on the
suffering of those involved. What is unquestionable is that media everywhere

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and the language that they use plays a vital role in bringing the world’s attention
to these events.
General overview of language
The importance of language when discussing the current situation in
Europe cannot be overstated. There is a long history of use of pernicious,
pejorative language to dehumanise people arriving in Europe, and while there
are signs that more positive, humane and accurate terminology is being used to
describe the crisis, it remains the case that language is being extensively used,
many times with specific intent, to stigmatise those crossing borders.
Language is inherently political, and the language used to describe
migrants and refugees is politicized. The way we talk about migrants in turn
influences the way we deal with them, with sometimes worrying consequences.
Language matters because its misuse can incorrectly and unfairly portray groups
of people in a negative light. Words such as ‘illegal’ are so loaded, not in the
least because they are a façade for a more racist undertone, but also because
they criminalise and dehumanise people. When this is used day in and day out,
it reaches a level of normality, so people begin to associate undocumented
migrants with criminality.
The visual representation of refugees plays an essential, yet neglected,
role in forming the stereotype of ‘the refugee’. This stereotype exemplifies how
we universalise ‘the refugee’ as a special kind of personand the lack of a voice
from refugees within modern media only exaggerates this. Refugees become
classified into the status of sub-citizens as they now have no means of
articulating a political will or rational argument – they are “seen but not heard”.
Furthermore, the lack of voice only enhances the perception of refugees being
seen as a ‘threat’. They are viewed as ‘speechless emissaries’ that trespass
boarders and attempt to seek protection in other countries, creating the image of
the ‘unpredictable stranger’ upon whom we project our fear and anxieties.
As will be discussed in the following section there are varied debates
about the use of particular words or phrases. For example, the repeated use of
the word “boatpeople” to describepeople using boats to migrate over the
Mediterranean or across SouthEast Asian waters presents issues. Daniel
Trilling, editor of the New Humanist, said “We don’tcall middle-class
Europeans who take regular holidays abroad ‘EasyJet people’, or the super-rich
of Monaco ‘yacht people…It strikes me as a way, intentional or not, of avoiding
discussing the reasons why refugees from Burma, for instance, take those boats

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and why other countries are reluctant to give them asylum.” This demonstrates
the important implications that labelling people has.
Refugee vs. Migrant
The distinction between the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ is critical.
There is no ‘migrant’ crisis in the Mediterranean, but there is a very large
number of refugees fleeing unimaginable misery and danger, and a smaller
number of people trying to escapethe sortof poverty that drives some to
desperation.
The United Nations defines refugees as ‘persons fleeing armed conflict or
persecution’. These people are forced to move and states are obliged to provide
them with protection under international law. A refugee is someone who is
outside their country of their nationality owing to a well-founded fear of being
persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular
social group or political opinion. They do not have protection from their own
state, and often it’s their own government that is persecuting them. Refugees
have a distinct legal status as they’ve been forced to leave their country because
their lives are in danger, and thus there is a recognised legal and moral duty to
provide international protection.
On the other hand, a migrant refers to someone who moves from one
place to another in order to find work or better living conditions. They are
defined as people who chooseto move not becauseof a direct threat of
persecution or death, but mainly to improve their lives by finding work, or in
some cases for education, family reunion, or other reasons. Migration
encompasses all kinds of movement from people, and can therefore be used to
describe a heterogeneous group of individuals including those moving for
economic reasons, often referred to as ‘economic migrants’. These economic
migrants, unlike refugees, do not necessarily suffer persecution.
The division of these terms into separate categories is therefore
necessary. If the media frame those fleeing Syria as migrants, then it follows
that the public and politicians are likely to be less inclined to offer their support,
financial or otherwise, as they believe that people are moving not out of fear for
their lives but rather for better paid work or an easier life. This consequently has
a huge impact on the lives of thousands of refugees as the help that they receive
varies with each new report dependent on the way that they are portrayed. The
prevalence of the term ‘migrant’ in describing the current situation may now

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seem less benign because its use in the current context ‘removes’ the unique
legal status given to refugees.
Despite the clear differences, politicians, the public, and most
significantly, the media often confusethe terms around migration. The
challenge with the terminology is that it can be unspecific – other than refugee
and asylum seeker, no terms have clearly defined meaning. However, the
terminology is extremely important – not necessarily the words, but how they
are used and what connotations they bring. The term migrant is often used in
British newspapers and has been used to infer illegal motives, for example the
Daily Express last year drew criticism by running the headline ‘Hidden Migrant
Millions’ as they revealed the “shocking” number of migrants actually living in
the UK.
Nonetheless, it is important to note that while a personmoving solely for
economic reasons may not currently have a recognised right to enter Europe to
seek a job, these individuals possess human rights and must be treated with
dignity and not subjected to prolonged detention or ill-treatment for arriving on
a territory without pre-authorisation. Yet the significance of the distinction
between the terms still stands, and the nature in which the media decide to use
these terms can have an important effect on the refugees themselves.
Right vs. Left
For decades the issue of immigration has been a toxic and divisive
political issue in the United Kingdom, and with the current European refugee
crisis, the debate around asylum and refugees has become highly charged,
volatile and polemical.
The British media scene is a complex one at bothnational and regional
levels. The national print media is regularly described in binary terms as
consisting of both ‘quality broadsheets’ and ‘tabloids’, and traditionally, these
labels have also been correlated with left- and right-wing editorial politics,
although these characterizations are no longer entirely accurate with tabloids –
the Mirror and the Sun often express views that are diametrically opposedto
others like the Mail and the Express. The broadsheet, the Telegraph, leans to the
right politically but is nowhere near as conservative as the Mail or Express.
There has been some excellent coverage focusing on the harsh reality of
the struggles faced by men and women, traversing Syria then Turkey, Greece,
Macedonia, Serbia and beyond in search of safety in Western Europe, often

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with young children in tow. While publications such as the Guardianand the
Independent have, predictably, focused on the human element of this crisis, the
right-wing media have in general responded rather differently, focusing on
national security. Publications such as the Daily Mail, the Sun, and the Daily
Mirror received widespread criticism on social media for their use of
dehumanising language when reporting on the refugee crisis. In what was
probably the lowest point for British media coverage, the country’s highest
circulation tabloid newspaper, the Sun, in April carpeted by the United Nations
human rights chief for describing migrants as “cockroaches”in a piece of
journalism which he said was reminiscent of anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. In
the midst of global media coverage of the tragic scenes of suffering by hundreds
of migrants who drowned off the coastof Italy earlier in the month, Sun
columnist Katie Hopkins wrote: “I don’tcare. Show me pictures of coffins,
show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people
looking sad. I still don’tcare…these migrants are like cockroaches.”This type
of language has an enormous impact on how the British public view the
refugees fleeing from conflict to seek safety, and when indiscriminate words,
such as “cockroaches”are used to describe these people, it subconsciously
creates a dangerous image of these people – an image of which people begin to
develop as more negative words are used to represent these refugees, which, in
turn, brings about the ‘criminal’ portrayal of refugees as is present in today’s
society.
The British media has been shown to be particularly aggressive in
reporting on the refugee crisis. Last year, researchers at Cardiff University’s
Journalism Schoolconducted a study to examine how the crisis was being
reported in different European countries. They examined the different types of
sourceused by the press, as well as the use of terminology – ‘migrant’,
‘refugee’, or ‘illegal immigrant’. They also analysed the different themes
highlighted in the coverage, whether it be policy debates, humanitarian
suffering or potential threats to national security, as well as the range of
explanations offered for population flows and discussions of how the crisis
could be resolved. The most striking finding of this research is how polarised
and aggressive British press reporting was compared to that of other countries.
In most countries, newspapers, whether right- or left-wing, tended to report
using the same sources. They also featured the same kinds of themes and
provided similar explanations and solutions to the crisis.
However, the British press was different. While the Guardian,and to a
lesser extent the Daily Mirror, featured a range of humanitarian themes and
sources sympathetic to the plight of refugees, the right-wing press consistently
endorsed a hardline anti-refugee ‘Fortress Europe’ approach.

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Figure 1: Percentage (%) of articles featuring selected themes in news coverage
The table illustrates the low proportion of articles which featured
humanitarian themes, for example with the Sun including only 7.1% of
humanitarian elements. This is in contrast to the EU average of 38.3%, and even
newspapers like the Guardian where 41.3% included humanitarian elements.
The table also demonstrates the high percentage of articles which emphasised
the threat that refugees and migrants poseto Britain’s welfare and benefits
system, with papers like the Daily Mail including 41.9% of this, in contrastto
the Daily Mirror which only included 4.2% of this in articles. The language
used in articles focused more on the threats that refugees may bring can have
significant effects on how readers of these articles view the current situation,
and the contrasts between the right- and left-wing of newspapers can lead to
confusion and uncertainty over the crisis – uncertainty which consequently
translates into a lack of willingness to fully supportrefugees in Europe, thus
having a huge impact on the lives of these people.
The turning point
The pivotal moment of the crisis came at the beginning of September
2015 when a majority of the front pages on one day were dedicated to the death
of three-year-old Syrian refugee, Aylan Kurdi. He was captured lifeless on a
beach near the Turkish resort of Bodrum as he and 11 other Syrians drowned
Guardian Telegraph Daily Mail Sun
Daily
Mirror
Migration figures/levels 69.2 71.9 75.8 54.8 50
Search and rescue/aid supplies 47.1 42.1 32.3 31 54.2
Political response/policy 41.3 29.8 33.9 38.1 33.3
Humanitarian (key theme) 16.3 8.8 4.8 0 4.2
Humanitarian (elements) 41.3 29.8 16.1 7.1 29.2
Threat to
welfare/benefits/resources 8.7 15.8 41.9 26.2 4.2
Threat to communities/cultural
threat 12.5 14 22.6 9.5 12.5
Threat to national security 11.5 7 16.1 11.9 0
Health risk for country of destination 1.9 0 4.8 9.5 4.2
Migrant criminality 7.7 7 14.5 7.1 4.2

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attempting to reach Greece. The images are shocking and exposethe truth about
the difficult journey that thousands of refugees have attempted. Within hours,
the image portraying a grim-faced policeman carrying the tiny bodyaway had
gone viral, becoming the top trending picture on Twitter under the hashtag
‘#KiyiyaVuranInsanlik’ (humanity washed ashore). The use of this language in
the hashtag increased the exposure that the images received but on a different
media platform being delivered to a different audience, and therefore it caused a
significant change in the way the refugees are illustrated.
Yet one of the most important effects of the images being released is the
dramatic U-turn it prompted from certain newspapers, notably those which
previously warned of the ‘threats’ that refugees brought.
Figure 2: Screenshots of newspaper front pages reporting on the Refugee Crisis

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As the front pages’ show, the distressing photos of Aylan Kurdi sparked a
huge change in the language these newspapers used to portray the refugee crisis.
This change happened almost overnight, for example the headline shown by the
Daily Mail of “Migrants: How many more can we take?” was published on the
28th August, whilst their next headline of “Tiny victim of a human catastrophe”
was published only 6 days later, on the 3rd September. The contrast between the
words used in these two headlines and the connotations they bring with them is
striking. The first headline creates the idea of a lack of controlover the situation
and is used to generate the thought that the UK is ‘too full’ of migrants and
cannot accept anymore, causing people to turn their backs on them and not give
them much support;whilst the second headline uses words like “victim” to
illustrate the hardships of refugees and the danger that they have in trying to flee
their native countries. This headline is much more open to welcoming refugees

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into the UK and therefore creates the need for support. The difference between
these two headlines therefore shows how a change in the language used from
the media has a significant influence on the attitudes of the public towards
refugees and thus, can have a huge impact on how much supportthey receive,
for example, the Guardianreported that a charity that runs independent
rescue boats to save refugees at sea said it had seen a 15-foldincrease in
donations in the 24 hours after the images of Aylan Kurdi were published,
demonstrating the importance of language used by the media in the refugee
crisis.
Media impact on refugees
Media coverage does not simply mediate public understanding; it also
mediates the lived experience of immigrants and their children. Threadgold et
al. (2008) found those who seemed most concerned about, and best understood,
the UK media’s typical approach toward migration were those who felt it
misrepresented them.
The issue was raised consistently in interviews and focus groups with
participants from minority ethnic groups even when researchers didn’t ask about
media representation. Members of ethnic and religious minority communities
and their leaders knew that ‘public opinion’ identified them as “scroungers”,
“bogus”and a drain on scarceresources. They also knew they were unwelcome
and tended to be associated with acts of crime and terrorism, and were also
clearly at risk of actual harassment and attack, believing the media were to
blame for this. This has been proven by a study commissioned by the Mayor of
London that found that the links between hostile media coverage and
harassment or violence towards asylum seekers were clearer when media
coverage coincided with local strains on resources like housing and health care.
It is significant that in these studies, minority groups – which sometimes
included asylum seekers and refugees – saw the media narrative about asylum
seekers and refugees negatively affecting them. In other words, the harmful
impact of media representation seems to be made worse by the media’s lack of
any distinction between asylum migration and other flows. Thus, the language
used by the media can ultimately create negative actions to be taken against
refugees if it portrays them as a ‘threat’, whilst it can also have a significant
impact on how safe and welcome refugees feel.
Therefore, the media is shown to be a powerful tool in shaping public
opinion – besides garnering sympathy for refugees, news coverage also has the

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power, through misrepresentation and propaganda, to stimulate hostility
towards refugees. In light of this, refugees’ ability to establish a new identity
and integrate in a host society partly hinges on their portrayal in the media.
Conclusion
The media’s choice of words when reporting on asylum seekers has a
significant impact on refugee’s identity. As was previously mentioned, the
terms ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ have been used interchangeably by some media
outlets, blurring the distinction between people who have left their country in
search of work and better prospects, and those who flee their homes because
their life is in jeopardy. Misrepresenting refugees not only undermines their
plight, but it also diminishes their chances of being accepted by society.
The problems of scant and prejudicial coverage of migration issues exist
everywhere. Even reporting of migration in the international media – with a few
notable exceptions – tends to be overly simplistic. Migrants are described as a
threat. There is a tendency, both among many politicians and in sections of the
mainstream media, to lump migrants together and present them as a seemingly
endless tide of people who will steal jobs, become a burden on the state and
ultimately threaten the native way of life. Such reporting is not only wrong; it is
also dishonest. Migrants often bring enormous benefits to their adopted
countries.
The media need to explain and reinforce a wider understanding that
migration is a natural process. No amount of razor wire or no matter how high
walls are built, desperate refugees will find a way through – the refugee crisis is
not going to go away. The inescapable conclusion is that there has never been a
greater need for useful and reliable intelligence on the complexities of migration
and for media coverage to be informed, accurate and laced with humanity.
What is clear, however, is the privileged position that the media inhabit
and that they have a responsibility to provide clear, and unbiased information to
the public. A failure to do so is very serious and can have wide-ranging
consequences, impacting on public opinion and therefore our willingness to
supportthose fleeing for their lives - negative portrayal of refugees in the
mainstream press exacerbates stigma and hostility, and sensational reports often
present asylum seekers as economic opportunists, potential criminals and a
threat to national security. The dehumanizing words used by the media has an
extreme impact of the lives of refugees, and thus plays a significant role in the
current refugee crisis in Europe.

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References
White, A. (2015). Moving Stories – InternationalReview of How Media Cover
Migration
Malkki, L. (1995). Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National
Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania.
Threadgold, T. (2009). The Media and Migration in the United Kingdom, 1999
to 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/refugee-crisis-media-
coverage_us_5615952ce4b0cf9984d850ec
http://uk.makesense.org/2015/11/20/the-role-of-the-media-in-europes-refugee-
crisis/
http://publications.europeintheworld.com/europes-refugee-crisis-the-media-and-
public-perceptions/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/07/30/why-the-
language-we-use-to-talk-about-refugees-matters-so-much/
http://theelders.org/article/refugee-crisis-how-language-contributes-fate-
refugees
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/03/refugee-crisis-coverage-words-
and-meanings-matter_n_8084016.html
http://theconversation.com/uk-press-is-the-most-aggressive-in-reporting-on-
europes-migrant-crisis-56083
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-
syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2015/09/cockroaches-campaigns-
how-uk-press-u-turned-refugee-crisis
http://epicureandculture.com/refugees-media-impact/

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