Abstract

SANTOS-SILVA, Dora  and  GUERREIRO, Débora. Media and forced migrations: social representations of refugees in the Portuguese media in two mediatic peaks (2015 and 2019). Comunicação e Sociedade [online]. 2020, vol.38, pp.123-137. ISSN 1645-2089.  https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.38(2020).2606.

Forced migration movements marked the economic, political, and social agenda in 2015. Consequently, these events also determined the agenda of the media, which took on an essential role in the social representation of refugees. In 2019, when humanitarian ships found it hard to dock at European ports, we saw another peak in media coverage. The purpose of this article is to analyse how the Portuguese media covered the theme of forced migration during two of the most relevant moments (2015 and 2019) and thus, how they contributed to the social representation of refugees. After a content analysis, we concluded that the newspapers on which our study focused undervalued refugees as individuals with their own identity, reducing them to a homogeneous and voiceless group. This trend, already present in 2015, was further emphasised in 2019. There was a clear absence of explanatory articles, with the media output showing a predominance of western perspective and a constant reliance on news agencies as sources.

Keywords : human rights journalism; refugees; migratory crisis; forced migration; social representations.

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