Narratives on Migration and Transnational Media

After a week in which immigration has surfaced as one of the key issues dominating election coverage in the UK, Olga Bailey offers an overview of her article on media representations of migration, 'Narratives on Migration and Transnational Media: crises of representation?', which she has co-written with Sonia De Nelson. The article will be published later this year in T. Threadgold, B. Gross and K. Moore (eds), Migration and the Media (New York: Peter Lang).

Debates on issues of migration have had perennial importance in national and international arenas and figure prominently in the political agendas of wealthy nations and in the transnational public media spheres. The migration debate was mainly reframed in the post 9/11 attacks interconnected to a ‘global crisis’, underpinned by economic and political issues, focusing concerns on national security, the threats to western culture and its economic impact on receiving western countries. The mainstream media has predominantly covered these debates echoing these concerns and constructing immigration as a national threat, thereby alienating and making alien populations who do not possess the necessary symbols of national belonging. Since 2008, due to the global economic crises, immigration coverage in the mainstream media has been mainly interlinked to the consequences of the economic crises in western societies. In discussing the effect of the economic crisis for international migration, Castles and Vezzoli point out that the media have widely reported on the visible effects on new migration, migrant employment, remittance flows and on attitudes of destination-country populations (2009: 69). The current rhetoric links migration debate to the economic crises in topics such as reducing recruitment of migrant workers because of growing unemployment, to governments’ actions on immigration management to regulate the borders and wider aspects of the life of immigrants, including access to jobs, welfare services, family reunification, and ultimately integration and the acquisition of citizenship. These measures aim to demonstrate to their political constituency they are acting in minimizing the crisis.

In this chapter we look at coverage of migration issues in the BBC news online services. Our focus is on the ways in which otherness interweaves with migration issues. Our assumption is that stories about immigration form an important arena through which ideas about the immigrant ‘other’ are expressed and reproduced.This in turn forms a wider context to our discussion as it is connected to the debate over the changes of the practices of transnational journalism generated by technological, economic and cultural factors. We have chosen the BBC News and BBC Mundo news online for two reasons: First, for its significant role as a public service in the transnational media landscape and its impact on public opinion and, consequently, on governmental policy processes. Second, for its high journalistic standards - accuracy and impartiality – which are recognised by a global audience. The aim is to provide a snapshot of the ways news on migration is presented in both sites. The paper first discusses the challenges faced by journalists working in transnational outlets, and then presents the BBC journalist’s news practices and its relevance to an understanding of the present production of migration stories. The last part provides examples of the representation of migration in BBC. 

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Crafty Magician or Bad Accountant? Identity and Ideology in British Newspaper Discourse

Dean Hardman offers an outline of his paper for the conference on Language in the (New) Media: Technologies and Ideologies that is about to take place at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Newspaper editorials perform a special role within the pages of the press, as they, unlike other news texts, are openly persuasive and there is usually less emphasis on objectivity (Lee and Lin, 2006). They represent the participation of the newspaper in public debate (Le, 2003) and are sites where ideological stances can often be found (Hackett and Zhao, 1994). This paper examines a selection of British newspaper editorials that focus upon British politicians and British party politics, in order to examine the relationship between the newspaper, its readers (idealised or otherwise) and the political parties and politicians represented.

The paper forms part of a wider study into how the ways in which newspapers construct identities for individual politicians can reflect political ideology, and utilises an analytical method which combines the approaches of critical discourse analysis with the concepts of performed identities and communities of practice. The study highlights how, by constructing identities for politicians, newspapers reveal their own political identities that are closely aligned to political parties, while simultaneously encouraging readers to conceptualise events in such a way that serves the ideology in question.

In this paper, editorials about financial policy from four British newspapers (The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror) are examined in detail. The paper highlights both the ways in which newspapers construct identities for politicians, alongside the effects of doing so - how this serves to construct identities for the newspapers themselves and orients readers towards sharing a particular point of view.

The paper will identify the role of metaphors, modality and other linguistic markers of stance in identity construction, and will compare and contrast the ways in which broadsheets and tabloids and the left and right-wing press orientate towards politicians and encode political ideologies.

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Citizen Journalism and Child Rights in Brazil

Olga Bailey discusses her recent research into these issues which has recently been published in Stuart Allan and Einar Thorsen's edited collection, Citizen Journalism: global perspectives (Peter Lang 2009).

Brazil is a country marked by social inequalities. The children of poor families are the first to suffer the consequences of economic and social disparities. Although Brazil has one of the most advanced laws designed to protect the rights of the child – the Statute on the Child and Adolescent (1990) - the current government has invested very little in a programme benefiting children. In some parts of the country, a great proportion of the child population, 62 million under the age of 18, live in conditions of poverty and their lives are marked by the lack of (among other things) a proper education, health care, and dignity; many are victims of prejudice, crime and violence.

In the last decade, this issue – child rights – has been debated in the public sphere, including the mainstream media, the government, politicians, and civil society – NGOs. In part, this public debate has produced several non-governmental initiatives that aims to guarantee that children’s rights are protected - from their basic needs, a decent life, to their rights to information, communication and participation, as citizens in the ‘making’.

My research discusses the potential of citizen-journalism in facilitating social changes in the lives of the vulnerable Brazilian children who have no knowledge of their rights, no visible possibility of inclusion in a society that has relegated them to the second-class status of ‘non-citizen’, with no perspective beyond the world of poverty.

In the framework of a child’s right to communication, children can be viewed as social actors who have a voice in interpersonal communication’ in the family, in the community, as well as in the media. From this perspective, since they have a very restricted access to the mainstream media and are often misrepresented, they can become producers of alternative media, putting across their own views on issues of relevance to their lives thus participating in democratic, pluralistic debates.
This discussion is based on an analysis of a project developed to change the lives of poor children. The project is produced by a non-governmental organization ‘communication and culture’ and funded by national and international organizations.

‘Communication and culture’ has two projects of media literacy carried out in public schools in two states of Brazil – Ceara and Pernambuco. O Clube do Jornal (The Newspaper Club) has been developed in 125 schools. The children are trained in basic journalistic skills and are responsible for producing their ‘newspaper’, which is distributed in the community. Primeira Letras (First Letter) has been developed in 809 public schools and aims to train a couple of teachers in each school to integrate the production of the children’s newspaper into the activities of the classroom. The project aims to generate political awareness towards practices of participation and citizenship and to encourage children to position themselves as social actors with power of agency to work towards individual and social transformation.

My research analyzes the role of citizen-journalism in fostering political participation in the daily lives of young, poor Brazilians in a democratic society that, to date, has not fulfilled its obligation to them. The practice of ‘citizenship’ through alternative media might improve their chances of social recognition and inclusion as citizens in the ‘making’, and in the process improve their quality of life.

Actor Network Theory and Journalism Studies: 'clearly' incompatible???

Can Actor Network Theory have anything to say about journalism? Joost van Loon wants to open up a discussion about the place of ANT in media, communication and cultural studies.

‘Actor Network Theory is clearly unsuited to the field of journalism studies; in fact, journalists themselves will find it strange… This theory is clearly out of place in trying to explain and explore the cut and thrust of newsroom dynamics’ (anon).

The downside of anonymous reviewing of proposals for research funding is that reviewers can exercise judgment without being held accountable. This statement, taken from a review of a research proposal of a friend of mine, is able to invoke the adjective ‘clearly’ twice without having to reveal from what light this clearness comes. In addition, the knee-jerk reaction that ‘journalists will find it strange’ was very revealing. Having spent about 7 years around practicing journalists I can safely state that many journalists find most things that academics write at best ‘strange’, but more often pedantic, pointless and irrelevant waffle. On that count, perhaps being found merely strange is a huge compliment!

But on the bright side, we have blogs now and the gauntlet has been laid down. Journalism studies, claiming to be a ‘field’, has nothing to learn from actor network theory. Why would this be the case? What is so special about journalism studies? What is so unique about ‘news room dynamics’ that these can be granted a priori immunity (because this was only a research proposal) against empirical philosophy? Where are the empirical studies that tell us that ANT has nothing interesting to say about journalism? In what court have the advocates of immunity made the conclusive case for their special status?

I have been making some preliminary enquiries amongst those closer to cultural studies and they stated that whereas there was perhaps not much interest in ANT (outside a few places in the UK), there were some areas where closer contact is easier to facilitate, for example in the area of material culture. There seems to be less of a sense that ANT is ‘clearly’ unsuitable.

I, for one, would welcome an opportunity for an open, rather than semi-anonymous, debate about this. Perhaps a blog such as this one can kick something off; as I suspect that the irritations invoked by ANT have not only ruffled the feathers of those colonizing a field with the name journalism studies, but probably also dwellers of the wider constituencies of communication studies, cultural studies and media studies. We would like to hear from you.

The Cultural Politics of Photojournalism

As part of the on-going ICAn seminar series, Professor Stuart Allan (Bournemouth University) will be delivering a paper entitled 'The Cultural Politics of Photojournalism' on Wednesday 22 April 2009. The talk focuses on the following issues:

News photographs, it is often argued, help to reinforce a news organisation’s larger claim to truth, to effectively provide ‘the stamp of objectivity to a news story.’ This appeal to objectivity can be sustained, of course, only to the extent that the reader or viewer accepts the photograph as an unmediated image of actual events.

Accordingly, in documenting the varied uses of news photographs – and with them the changing role of the photojournalist – this question of objectivity will be centred for critique. Specifically, it will be shown that the visual truth of the news photograph has been frequently challenged by various controversies, thereby inviting increasingly sceptical responses. Singled out for particular attention in this regard will be the ways in which photojournalism is being transformed by digital technologies, where the manipulation or ‘correction’ of news images has engendered an ethical crisis for its truth claims.

Time: 4.00-6.00. Room: EE219, Clifton Campus, NTU. Everyone welcome.

Networked Beings in the Newsroom

Joost van Loon and Emma Hemmingway are presenting a paper entitled 'Networked Beings in the Newsroom: Transactions, Translations and Transformations' at 'The State of Things: towards an economy of artifice and artefacts' conference at the University of Leicester in April. Below they discuss the key ideas informing their paper and their research in this area:

The economic turn within Actor Network Theory asks: What is the matter of associations? What flows constitute networking? These questions are reminiscent of, in particular, Deleuze & Guattari's earlier explorations of the assemblage, which implies a radically non-anthropocentric understanding of the subject.

Tracing some of the lineages further back to Whitehead and Spinoza, we can detect an undercurrent in thinking about ontology that have been dubbed 'philosophy of organism' (Whitehead) as well as 'empirical philosophy' (Dewey). In this paper, we describe a very modest 'event' in a newsroom which involves an accreditation of a particular association which in classical anthropological research would be called 'a rite of initiation'. We focus on the role of the post-broadcast evaluation as the configuration in which membership is affirmed through specific transactions or gifts.

However, we go further and argue that these gifts do more than merely establish a matter of associating, they also imbue significance and bestow this upon the actor-network-in-formation. This is the work of translation and it is the domain of particular mediators. Finally, the 'sign value' of accreditation becomes confirmed in the transformation of the moment in which the news product itself becomes collectivised as a member of the network; as deemed worthy of being affirmed as an actor.

Guest Paper: The Children's Rights Movement in Brazil and the Construction of News Agendas

As part of the on-going ICAn seminar series, Lidia Maropo - a visiting scholar from the University of Fortaleza in Brazil and the New University of Lisbon, Portugal - will be delivering a paper entitled 'The Children's Rights Movement in Brazil and the Construction of News Agendas' on Wednesday 25th March.

This presentation analyses the relationship between the children’s rights movement and the news media in Brazil. In her research, Lidia Marôpo raised questions such as: the social movement succeeded in becoming a credible news source? What structure and resources were needed to influence the journalistic discourse? What strategies did the movement use? What was the social actors’ knowledge on the media’s working routines? Was there a professional management with the media? What agreements and conflicts existed between the media and the movement? The research findings were based on interviews with activists and on quantitative and qualitative content analyses of two Brazilian newspapers.

Time: 4.00-6,00pm. Place: GEE219, Clifton Campus, NTU.
Everyone welcome.