Contents – Autumn-Winter 2018

Karstens, Eric – Kuznik, Barbara – McNeil, Robert:

Media practices related to migration and intra-EU mobility in the EU-15 Member States

This report presents the findings from a survey of journalists as well as a selection of their sources in government and civil society in Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It aims to develop a clearer understanding of the commercial, institutional, practical, and technical factors that affect news production and shape media narratives and frames around EU mobility and Third-Country Nationals (TCN) in different EU countries. Findings indicate that in all of the countries, journalists tend to have an idealistic view of their own profession. However, confidence in the sustainability of their jobs is much greater in the North than the South. Germans and Swedes acknowledge structural political and business influence on their work, but generally assert their editorial autonomy, whereas Italians are wary of built-in partisanship in their media sphere, and Spanish feel that the news are directly manipulated by the powers that be. The UK takes a middle position, where many journalists yield to the perceived political leaning or mission of their outlet. Across the board, journalists look at migration through the prism of “otherness” or even “problem,” typically framed by their country’s most immediate current concerns or public agendas, such as the admission of refugees and other TCNs in Germany and Sweden, migration across the Mediterranean in Italy and Spain, and intraEU worker mobility in the UK. Hence, skilled workers receive hardly any journalistic attention at all, while perceived “poverty migration” and refugees dominate journalists’ perception of news value and relevance. The journalists claim to have educational and ethical intentions, yet at the same time they appear to be driven by topics and controversies raised by other social actors.

Bajomi-Lázár, Péter:

Media practices related to migration and intra-EU mobility in the EU-10 Member States

This paper offers an overview of the findings of the interviews conducted with journalists and influencers on how the media cover the issues of mobility and migration in four Central/Eastern European countries, including in Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia. It reveals that 1) despite similarities in the recent histories of these countries, the issues of mobility and migration are covered differently across the region, 2) immigration has been a major issue on the public agenda since 2015 dividing some of these societies, even though relatively few migrants and refugees from beyond the European Union have actually stayed in the region, and 3) emigration—or intra-European mobility— is as much an issue as immigration and has had severe economic and demographic effects.

McNeil, Robert – Karstens, Eric:

Comparative report on cross-country media practices, migration, and mobility

This papers looks at the practices of media in the reporting of migration and intra-EU mobility in a set of EU member states – Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. It compares national traditions in the practice of journalism, looking at journalists’ self-described practices in generating stories about the various forms of migration, the newsroom and professional cultures in which they are immersed, and the broader environments in which journalism happens. It identifies that migration policy is highly politicised in all of the sampled countries. It shows differing levels of political intervention in the reporting of migration, and three broad types of political interaction between government and news journalists, which create a spectrum of government/media relationships ranging from the strongly and obviously controlling; to influence that may be strongly felt, but that is subtler and which occurs behind-the-scenes; to the largely hands-off. It also shows that migration narratives differ by country depending on recent migration experiences and the political salience of key aspects of migration. In most of the countries surveyed, the actual migrant stock was not a major factor shaping migration coverage. Further, it considers how the relationships between government approaches to media, commercial contexts, the national norms and traditions within journalism in the member states and migration as an issue combine to affect journalism practice, and wider public debates about migration.

Gödri, Rita:

The relationship between online self-representation and emigration

This paper discusses networking opportunities and the question of how these relate to online self-representation. By offering an analysis of ten vlogs, it intends to demonstrate how effectively emigrant Hungarians build new relationships and create new personalities through new media platforms.

Iványi, Márton:

The past, present and future of the global digital media economy

The political environment has led to the global rise of transnational corporations and product chains since the post-war era, one of the most visible elements of which has been the spread of information and communication technologies. The technical upgrading and the digitalisation of private capital, the interlinking of ‘traditional’ sectors with ‘new’ ones, state-sponsored market liberalisation and the ensuing institutional changes in the past decades have resulted in the rise of computer-based communication. From a US state power perspective, the interactions between international political economy and geopolitics can be observed in different forms after World War II, through the unilateralism that emerged at the beginning of the post-Cold War period, the crisis of hegemony manifest in the 2000s, and the resulting challenges. As a result of these processes, a contradictory, shifting, ´indissoluble` tangle has emerged that includes both state power and transnational features.