Department of Informatics and Media
Master’s Programme in Social Sciences,
Digital Media and Society specialization
Two-year Master’s Thesis
The dominant media discourse of Swedish newspapers about Romanian beggars in Sweden and their perceived effects
Student: Vlad Valentin Tarmure
5th of September 2019 Abstract
The focus of the study is the representation in the Swedish Printed Media of a group of Romanian beggars, living in Sweden. This research explores the relationship between visibility of Romanian beggars in the Swedish media and its perceived effects on that group.The study has two dimensions; one which examines the dominant media discourse on Romanian beggars (from the viewpoint of the printed media), and the other, which examines a group of Romanian beggars’ sense-making of their media representation (the Romanian beggars’ angle). It is the first study to research media representation of Romanian beggars from the beggars’ view. The study has academic relevance because it helps understand better how the Romanian beggars in Sweden live and relate to all the media exposure they have. The findings of the study add to the scarce body of media and communications literature about the beggars from Sweden. The study used methods, such as the content analysis of media frames and visual ethnography, as well the analytical category of visibility, as proposed by Brighenti (2007), as its overarching theoretical framework. It also employed second level agenda setting and framing theoretical concepts to complement the Visibility Theory and to develop a customised theoretical model of media visibility for the issue of Romanian beggars. The study’s results reveal that the dominant media discourse uses a mainly negative tone of voice, which elicits an aggressive emotional response from the reader. Furthermore, other findings in the study also suggest that the participants in the study were mostly unaware of their media visibility. Those, who were aware of the power of media visibility, better perceived the potential effects of it, both positive and negative.
1 Table of Contents
Abstract ...... 1 1. Introduction ...... 6 Marginalised EU Citizens’ Immigration to Sweden ...... 9 2. Background ...... 12 The Roma- a Minority Group with a Long History of Discrimination ...... 12 The Right to Free Movement within the E.U...... 15 Immigration to Sweden from Romania and Bulgaria ...... 17 Roma Beggars in Sweden ...... 18 3. Literature Review ...... 21 4. Theoretical Framework ...... 27 Visibility, Visible and the Invisible ...... 27 Visibility as a form of social life ...... 28 Models of visibility ...... 31 The model of visibility as “recognition” ...... 31 The model of visibility as “control” ...... 33 The model of visibility as “the spectacular” ...... 34 Visibility and power ...... 35 Visibility and the role of communication media ...... 36 Media, visibility and publicness ...... 38 Social Representations ...... 39 Effects of Mediated Visibility ...... 41 Agenda Setting and Framing in Mediating Visibility ...... 42 Agenda Setting Theory ...... 43 Second-level Agenda Setting ...... 45 Framing Theory ...... 47 A Mediated Visibility Model for Roma Beggars ...... 50 Identification of the concept ...... 50 Dimensions of the model ...... 51 Conceptualisation of dominant media discourse of Romanian beggars ...... 52 Conceptualisation of ‘perceived’” media effects ...... 54
2 5. Methodology ...... 57 Research Design ...... 57 Content Analysis of Media Frames ...... 58 Visual Ethnography ...... 61 Data Gathering Process ...... 63 Quantitative data gathering ...... 63 Computer generated analysis -extraction of patterns of frame (“topics’) ...... 65 Computer generated analysis – negative vs positive word usage ...... 66 Computer generated emotions triggered in the analysed sample ...... 66 Qualitative data gathering ...... 67 In-field interviews ...... 68 The Interview Participants ...... 68 Processing and Transcribing Data ...... 69 6. Ethics ...... 70 Ethical Considerations ...... 70 Personal Motivation ...... 71 Reflections on the In-field Interviews ...... 72 7. Presentation and Interpretation of the Results ...... 74 Results of the Content Analysis ...... 74 Presentation of the results of content analysis ...... 75 Interpretation of the results of content analysis ...... 84 Interview Results ...... 86 Presentation and interpretation of results regarding level of awareness among the group of Romanian beggars ...... 87 Low level of awareness ...... 88 Presentation and interpretation of results regarding the perceived effects ...... 89 Perceived negative effects ...... 90 Misrepresentation and Distortion of Reality ...... 92 Neutral effects- Repercussions in the legal and political domains ...... 93 8. Conclusion: Discussion, Limitations and Recommendations ...... 95 Discussion ...... 99
3 Limitations of the Study ...... 100 Suggestions for Future Research ...... 100 Final Remarks ...... 101 Bibliography ...... 103 Appendix 1. Phrases ...... 111 Frequency of Phrases ...... 111 Appendix 2. Topics ...... 117 Appendix 3. Semi-structured Interview Questions ...... 119
4 Table of Figures
Figure 1: Articles/ media channel searched for keywords ...... 7 Figure 2: The relationship between social life, the visible, visibility and mediated visibility ...... 30 Figure 3: Representation of the bi-dimensional theoretical model ...... 50 Figure 4: Representation of the first dimension of the theoretical model ...... 52 Figure 5: Representation of second dimension of the theoretical model ...... 54 Figure 6: Articles in four publications - search based on specific words ...... 61 Figure 7: Romanian beggars in Swedish Media WordGraph - Frequency of Phrases ...... 73 Figure 8: Romanian beggars in Swedish Media. WordGraph – Frequency Patterns ...... 76 Figure 9: Romanian beggars in Swedish media - dominant tone of voice ...... 80 Figure 10: Romanian beggars in Swedish media – emotional reactions ...... 80
List of Tables Table 1: WordStat Sentiment Dictionary-Categories of Emotions ...... 64 Table 2: Romanian beggars in Swedish media – frequency of phrases ...... 74 Table 3: Romanian beggars in Swedish media – content analysis clustering ...... 78 Table 4: Frequency of phrases ...... 107 Table 5: Frequency of topics ...... 117
5 1. Introduction
The free movement, of persons and labour, is one of the four freedoms of the EU, although little, if any, regulation exists that addresses the free movement of poverty.
Nevertheless, this lack of regulation, combined with various other factors, has obliged the affluent and egalitarian Scandinavian, welfare-society to face specific social challenges, and to deal with difficult political dilemmas. One of these is the so-called “migration of poverty” (Djuve 2015). Some representatives of this migration – (migrant) Romanian beggars in
Sweden – have created a new state of affairs in Swedish cities, by prompting a wave of social challenges for the local authorities, governments and other European Institutions (Hansson and
Mitchell 2018).Without even realizing their impact on Nordic society, this group has gained a lot of attention and has found themselves at the centre of public opinion.
It has been over forty years since Swedish people have seen so many beggars and Roma camps in their communities - both large and small. As we will show later, the discomfort that they felt was more than simply esthetical as will be showed later. A simple search of the media archives (using Retriever Software) for articles containing the keywords “tiggare” (beggar) and
“Rumän” (Romanian), between the years 2012 and 2018, found 10,031 journalistic pieces (See
Figure 1). That means an average of at least two media articles per beggar, considering that the official total number of EU beggars in Sweden falls within the range of four to five thousand
(Hansson and Mitchell 2018). Therefore, we can claim, with certainty, that the migrant groups of beggars, living in Sweden, are highly visible in the Swedish media.
6
Figure 1: Articles/ media channel searched for keywords
The study has important academic relevance as it is the first to focus on the issue of the media visibility of a group of Romanian beggars, either living in Sweden or who have travelled to Sweden to gain better life opportunities. No study thus far has explored this social phenomenon, both from the viewpoint of the Romanian beggar sitting on the street and the media, which acts as the creator of the beggars’ media representation. The provision of empirical data concerning this social issue, of which many citizens are aware, could make an important contribution to the field of media studies into minority groups.
A major strength of this study is the researcher’s ability to communicate with the immigrant group of Romanian beggars, in order to collect data and to run the research in vivo.
The body of research that specifically addresses the media representations and visibility, or invisibility, of migrant groups of beggars emigrating from Romania to Sweden, is modest. Given this lack of a robust body of research, together with the lack of interest in media analysis research into migrant and minority groups, this exploratory study of the visibility, representation,
7 and portrayal of Romanian beggars in Swedish media could make an important contribution to the field. Furthermore, focusing on gathering information and opinions about their media representation, directly from the Romanian beggars themselves, could lead to a better understanding of this social phenomenon. It might also provide empirical data that lays the groundwork for further research into it, thus making a unique contribution to the field of media and communication studies. Therefore, the study has two dimensions. The first looks at the construction of the media’s representation of Romanian beggars (from the viewpoint of the printed media). The second examines a group of Romanian beggars’ sense-making of their media representation (the Romanian beggars’ angle). Overall the study explores the relationship between the media visibility of Romanian beggars and the perceived effects of this on a group of beggars (the potential consequences of, of implications for, them).
Taking into account the two dimensions of the study, we tentatively used a mixed- methods research design: We included theories, such as second level agenda setting and framing, beneath an overarching analytical category of visibility, as conceptualized by Brighenti. For the first dimension of the study, we used Matthes and Kohring’s (2008) model of content analysis of the media frame. For the second dimension we used the “Ethnography of the Visual” methods.
We used content analysis to analyse the sample 527 articles about Romanian beggars that appeared in two national newspapers (the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) and the Dagens Nyheter
(DN)) and two regional newspapers (GöteborgsPosten and SydSvenskan). This entailed in-field interviews with eleven Romanian beggars, found on the streets of Malmo, in the south of
Sweden.
8 Marginalised EU Citizens’ Immigration to Sweden
Many beggars migrated to the Nordic countries, fleeing Western countries that have banned and restricted begging, in order to find better life opportunities and to settle down in what has been labelled ‘a safe-haven for begging’.
One report, about immigration in Sweden, states that before the EU expanded, in 2004, there was a discussion in Sweden and other countries about whether new immigrants would be greatly over-represented in income transfer programs and among those looking for the social benefits. The study revealed that this was not the case for Sweden and that the so-called ‘social tourists’ had not yet arrived (Gerdes and Wadensjö 2019). Although there are no exact figures for or estimates of the population of marginalised EU citizens, begging in Sweden, an SVT study
(Olsson and Axelsdotter Olsson 2015) stated that, in 2015, the number of beggars increased from around 800–2000 to around 3700–4100. Other research claims there were officially 4–5000 vulnerable EU migrants in Sweden, most of who probably arrived under the provisions of the law (Hansson and Mitchell 2018). In Stockholm, only 14 percent of beggars identified themselves as ethnic Romanians, or non-Roma as they will be called throughout this report, whereas an overwhelming majority identified themselves either as ‘Roma’ or ‘Romanianised
Roma” (Djuve 2015).
Furthermore, a study by Gerdes and Wadensjö (2019) concluded that migrants from
Bulgaria and Romania were less-often unemployed than other migrants and received fewer benefits, or even lower wages, than the local population. Despite the fact that the Romanian diaspora in Sweden seems to be quite small and well-blended into or invisible in Swedish society, Roma beggars have benefitted heavily, lately, from a greater visibility in different media
9 outlets, both in Sweden and Romania. Numerous news outlets, interviews, articles, reports, shows, debates and other forms of media have paid a lot of attention to the vulnerability of this group of beggars from Romania. By allowing some issues to be covered, while ignoring or not seeing others, the media becomes a site of visibility and thus has the power to paint some issues as more relevant than others. Hence, mass media is the site of a political contest that mirrors the resonance of the political discourse within the public’s consciousness; media enhances the political actor’s shaping of the public’s view (Bleich, Bloemraad, and Graauw 2015). With the help of media representation, this migrant group of beggars has become a visible and important debate topic for Swedish society and authorities, which now face new social challenges, with important implications on the society and lives of Romanian beggars and Swedish taxpayers.
Potentially the main challenge is to offer them better life opportunities and to undertake the right correct measure to do this, given begging is not forbidden by law in Sweden and their right to stay in Sweden is granted unequivocally as they are European citizens. All of these factors have lead to a great deal of social and public debate within Swedish media and society.
This study focuses on the Swedish Printed Media representations of Romanian beggars living in Sweden and the effect of this visibility on a group of these beggars. The study seeks to provide empirical data about this relationship the (“what” and ‘how’) but not to determine the causes (the “why’). Therefore, as mentioned earlier, the study has two dimensions: an examination of the construction of the dominant media discourse (the angle of the printed media) and the other one, at the sense-making of their media representations by the group of Romanian beggars (the Romanian Beggars’ angle).
10 Considering these two dimensions, we propose the following research questions:
1. What is the dominant media discourse in the Swedish Newspapers about the group of beggars from Romania?
2. Are the beggars from Romania living in Sweden aware of their media representation by the Swedish Newspapers?
3. What are the perceived effects of visibility by the group of Romanian beggars and their current affairs?
This study uses an overarching theoretical concept of “visibility”, as proposed by
Brighenti (2007, 2008), to answer these research questions, because there is no fully developed and powerful theoretical framework that is able to interpret the contemporary social phenomenon of Romanian beggars’ media visibility in Sweden. Therefore, that the reason we considered it would be valuable the analytical category of visibility (Brighenti 2008).
11 2. Background
This chapter presents the background and context of the studied issue. The problem of the
Roma, a minority group in Europe, has its roots far back in history. In the following section we will make a more detailed presentation of their situation. This chapter is structured into four 4 parts; the history of the Roma people with a European context, the right of free movement within the EU, immigration to Sweden from Romania and Bulgaria and the current situation for Roma beggars in Sweden
The Roma- a Minority Group with a Long History of Discrimination
In the year 1481, the Council of Bern passed a series of edicts expelling “non-citizens”, in effect gypsies, pilgrims, the wandering poor, and French-speaking beggars. By 1527, the
Council required all local inhabitants, with a right to be in the city, to wear badges that functioned as the credentials of their residency and origin. The city kept a master-list of badges in order to prevent fraud and to protect the badge-holders. It is worth noting that this occurred five hundred years ago (Hansson and Mitchell 2018).
More recently, the first wave of Eastern European Roma migrants arrived in the Paris region at the beginning of the 1990s. More followed at the beginning of the 2000s, until a turning point was reached with the suppression of Schengen visa requirements for Romania 2001, and
Bulgaria in 2002. Since the 1990s, the presence of Eastern European migrants, and specifically that of the Roma, has been a sensitive issue in the European Union accession process for
Romania and Bulgaria. Before 2007, the management of Roma migration was chiefly a national matter (often the responsibility of the home country), whereas after 2007 it became an increasing
12 issue for the local politics of the target regions. This did not mean that the Roma’s status was legal, before their country’s accession in 2007 (Nacu, 2011).
The fact that the citizens of the two countries no longer needed visas, in order to travel to other European destinations, meant that the migration of poor Roma became a crucial issue for the population in both countries: the home country and country of destination. It raised issues of identity for the home-country population, such as not being assimilated and being perceived as
“deviant”.
The ethnic composition of Roma is more complex than their simply being identified as
Romanian or Bulgarian Roma (Nacu, 2011). Romania and Bulgaria are still the poorest members of the European Union (Bulgaria’s per capita GDP just under 30% of the EU average and
Romania’s is just under 40%). At least 90% of the Roma in Romania live in poverty and at least
25% lack the registration documents that are required to access to education, healthcare, and social insurance. Therefore main reason for the migration of poor Roma becomes obvious: to seek monetary resources and better life opportunities (Hansson and Mitchell 2018).
According to the European Commission, in these two European countries, the Roma represent an important-and often discriminated against-ethnic minority where structural discrimination, hate crimes, and other forms of violence against Roma people are very common
(Nacu, 2011; Hansson and Mitchell 2018). Programs such as Phare, in close collaboration with international agencies, such as the UNDP and the World Bank, were strongly promoted by the
EU’s Commission against the Roma discrimination in the pre-accession process; however they did not really prove to be effective. The actual impact of the programs had been widely
13 acknowledged as having no real effect on the plight of the Roma. Conversely, they have lead to increased competition between the Roma and other vulnerable groups from the candidate countries. The manner in which the issue of Roma discrimination was addressed and debated, in terms of migration, created a dichotomy in how Roma and non-Roma migrants were portrayed.
Roma were seen as an important problem element of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants and constantly portrayed as offenders or beggars, whereas the non-Roma migrants were considered to be themselves, hard workers (Nacu, 2011).
The wave of migrant Roma beggars to Sweden has similar features to the previous waves of migration of poor Roma to other European countries. Many migrants used privately owned vans, which offered them more flexibility and mobility. This was greatly accentuated by the technological arsenal of globalisation, such as mobile phones and money transfers. Furthermore, these migrations involved family members or close neighbours. Similar to other migrant groups, they were organised into networks, where a few pioneers migrated to new places in order to explore, and then others followed. Because they had little money or other resources left, by the time they arrived in the destination country, they created specific forms of habitat, such as slums, and other shelter alternatives. This novel situation, of growing “shanty towns”, “tent cities”, and
“camps”, shocked and outraged locals and sparked a lot of debate in Sweden as it did earlier, in most other European countries (Nacu, 2011; Hansson and Mitchell, 2018).
In some countries, e.g., France, many slums and temporary settlements were regularly evacuated by the police, often at the request of other locals, owners or the municipality. However the situation is slightly different in Sweden, since Sweden’s law governing eviction are strong and thus it is relatively impossible for the police to evacuate people, even those that might have
14 occupied another’s land illegally. Thus, there is an overlap in the legal system, between the crime of violating legal property and the violation of legal protections and rights of vulnerable people.
Nevertheless, the migrants were frequently harassed, evicted and driven off. Moreover, some migrants, who lived in these conditions, were also threatened and abused by night visitors who disturbed and damaged the settlements. Furthermore, the evictions themselves are often of dubious legality, and the police seem not to offer proper protection to the abused or threatened migrants (Hansson and Mitchell 2018).
As the regulations change, the Roma have continued to migrate from their home towns or villages to the Parisian suburbs, learning by trial and error how to exploit the niches in the juridical and administrative regulations. They have somehow taken advantage of the border porosity – just a flight away from home country – and do not have to cross several borders.
Over the past few years, the subject of European citizens, who travel to other countries within the EU in order to beg (Adriaenssen, 2011), has been part of the political agendas of most
European countries. Roma migrations have become increasingly politicized, at local, regional and international levels. The Roma face protests and are becoming the subjects of electoral campaigns or other forms of politicisation (Nacu, 2011).
The Right to Free Movement within the E.U.
Since 2007, Roma from Romania and Bulgaria, and their fellow citizens, have had the right to travel and reside – for a limited period – in all European countries. According to the
European Union, freedom of movement and residence for persons in the EU is the cornerstone of
Union citizenship, as established by the Treaty of Maastricht, in 1992, and confirmed by The
15 Lisbon Treaty in regards the general provisions in the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice
(“Free Movement of Persons | Fact Sheets on the European Union | European Parliament” n.d.).
However, the concept of the free movement of persons has changed in meaning, since its inception, in 1957. The Treaty of Maastricht introduced the notion of EU citizenship, which underpins the right of persons to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member
States. For stays of under three months, EU citizens’ only requirement is that they possess a valid identity document or passport. The host Member State may require the concerned persons to register their presence in the country. Additionally, EU citizens and their family members – if not working – must have sufficient resources and health insurance to ensure that they do not become a burden on the social services of the host Member State during their stay. EU citizens do not need residence permits, although the Member States may require them to register with the authorities. Family members of EU citizens, who are not nationals of a Member State, must apply for a residence permit, which is valid either for the duration of their stay or a five-year period (“Free Movement of Persons | Fact Sheets on the European Union | European Parliament” n.d.). Notwithstanding this, the French labor market did not open for the newcomers. In addition, a government regulation was issued stating that Romanian and Bulgarian migrants would receive notification to leave the country (Obligation de Quitter le Territoire Français – OQTF) in circumstances where they become an unreasonable burden on the French social assistance system; furthermore there was somewhat unclear notion that Roma were liable to be fined if they were caught begging in the streets (Nacu, 2011).
Under this regulation, many Roma living in camps were often collectively given
OQTF’s, from 2007 onwards. In Sweden however, the new immigration was relatively small
16 both compared with total migration to Sweden and with the migration flows from those countries to some other EU countries (Gerdes and Wadensjö 2019). For instance, according to Médecin du
Monde, the total number of Roma beggars in Sweden was similar to those living in the Paris
Region (Nacu, 2011). Most of them were Roma from Romania and Bulgaria, but there were also a small group of non-Roma. This group principally earned their living from begging or other activities reminiscent of hunting and gathering (Nacu, 2011).
Immigration to Sweden from Romania and Bulgaria
Immigration to Sweden, from Bulgaria and Romania, increased between 2006 and 2007 following their entry into the EU, although the increase was not very large in absolute terms.
Migration declined in 2008 and 2009 and continued at a lower level (than in 2007) through
2010–2012. The drop in migration between 2007 and 2008 was most likely to have been a result of the 2008 economic crisis, although it might also partly have been because a number of immigrants – who had already been in Sweden for some time – chose to register as living there in 2007, after they became eligible for a permit to stay and work because of EU enlargement
(Gerdes and Wadensjö, 2013). Following Romania and Bulgaria’s inclusion in the European
Union, in 2007, Sweden and other countries expected to face new social challenges – such as the new EU member countries’ populations migrating for work – as had previously occurred in countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom. In those countries, there were concerns about, and a strong reticence towards, the migratory population from Bulgaria and Romania, especially after the end of the transitional rules period that were set ease the expected immigration wave.
Sweden had no experience of being confronted with a huge wave of new EU citizens, ready to migrate from other EU countries.
17 Roma Beggars in Sweden
In an academic paper that examined the state of Roma beggars in Sweden, Hansson and
Mitchell (2018) tried to better understand how poverty, and in the situation of Roma beggars in
Sweden, were governed in an era of free European movement. The authors claimed that Sweden had created what could be called a state of exception for this migrant group. In this case, state of exception was not defined as a fixed time period but rather as a relationship that existed between the sovereign and its subject(s). When the sovereign places people in a state of exception it feels forced to make an exception from the principal stance concerning the equality of all human beings: “worthless life is being separated from political life” (Hansson and Mitchell, 2018).
Consequently, it is in the interest of democratic (and totalitarian) states to continually “cleanse” their population, establishing spaces of exception wherein those deemed to deviate from the order can be concentrated ,so as to be gradually eliminated. (Hansson and Mitchell, 2018)
The authors examined two cases of Roma beggars in Sweden, critically; matters which had strong implications on the welfare society. First was the moment when the municipality of
Eskilstuna required all beggars to seek a permit from the Police, including the leader of the regional government’s allegation that “it was time and place to make an exception concerning the equality of all human beings”. The second case concerned the Valfridsson Report (Hansson and
Mitchell, 2018) .
Jurist Martin Valfridsson is the national coordinator for vulnerable EU citizens in
Sweden. His report and recommendations are the central guiding principles for Swedish authorities, particularly on how the existing law should be read regarding the immigrant situation. Scholars argued that Valfridsson’s right of residence was flawed. Valfridsson stated that
18 if Roma beggars were granted the use of municipal or private land, this would ultimately lead to the restoration of the slum communities that Swedish society has frenetically worked to counteract. Furthermore, another guideline was to deny the children of Roma beggars access to school, since their parents did not have a job in Sweden and, thus, the children were not entitled
Swedish schooling (Sveriges Radio n.d.).
The authors argued that Valfridsson denial of the right to housing to EU migrants, based on the fact that there was no unconditional right to housing for Swedes themselves, was merely a desire to preserve the welfare state. They postulated that the exclusion of EU migrants was politics of equality for insiders and not a form of politics of growing inequality. Moreover, poor migrants from Romania and Bulgaria were in the same situation with asylum-seekers, and whereas neither group had Swedish personal identity numbers, asylum-seekers were still able to avail themselves of most aspects of the healthcare and social housing systems. Even though the
Roma had official national citizenship and indeed an a priori right to be in Sweden, they were denied the same very rights required to fulfil their basic human needs. The authors further argued that by construing the EU migrants as exceptional (not having the right to housing or other life necessities), Sweden was condemning them to constant threats of – and sometimes actual – violence. The reason was Sweden wanted to make an exception to the standing principle which governs a social welfare society; the equality of all human beings. Therefore, the authors posited, not only do impoverished EU migrants to carry the burden of their “vulnerability” from their home countries but they also experience sovereign violence from the police and security guards; manifested through banishment, neglect, and a denial of basic social needs as well as the “overall withdrawal of social protection” (Hansson and Mitchell, 2018). In conclusion, they were
19 relegated to being outside the protection of the law and society, and turned into so-called
“rightless people”. (Hansson and Mitchell, 2018) They were stripped down to what is being called a “bare life”, i.e. a life reduced to a sheer biological existence, devoid of rights and fully at the mercy of sovereign violence.(Hansson and Mitchell 2018)
They became an issue of local politics, among local authorities, rival political parties,
NGOs, local support groups, local inhabitants – who were often hostile to their presence – and the police. Thus municipalities found themselves in a double-bind; caught between maintaining local order and tolerance towards the Roma migrants, and supporting them.
The status of the Roma, traveling to other European countries, made legal working papers an almost impossible option, therefore the local actors needed to reach compromise deals, which often implied rehousing a small minority or total eviction (Nacu, 2011).
Poverty was simultaneously the root cause of their being in Sweden and the reason why they lacked real rights – their economic situation in Romania and their long history of discrimination. Essentially, structural racism and discrimination turned them into today’s equivalent of Bern’s French-speaking beggars. They became a minority that, like the Jews, were seen as endemic to Europe, and they were denied access to decent housing, or even sanitary living conditions.
They are classed as ‘beggars’, if not worse, in the media, and exceptionally not quite the citizens that the law makes them out to be. All of this makes migrants greater objects of public attention than they ever were in their home countries (Nacu, 2011; Hansson and Mitchell, 2018).
20 3. Literature Review
This chapter presents the existing studies in the field. The purpose of this chapter is to offer an overview of what research has been done so far to address similar research topics.
Therefore, this chapter will map out some of the existing studies related to ethnic, racial or sexual minority groups and their media visibility.
The body of research that addresses issues of visibility is quite robust. The majority of academic endeavours and existing studies related to visibility span a wide range of fields; from business studies to mass-media and communication studies; from gender studies to social and political fields. We identified several specific studies identified and present a review of them and their results below.
The work of Djuve (2015) comprises an extensive qualitative study of the population of migrants from Romania. The study looked more closely into the social and economic aspects, in order to gain a better picture of their living conditions in their home country, the economic and social organisation of migration for begging and street work, how they were treated by their host countries’ populations and institutions, and what were the other consequences of leaving their original communities.
Another study by Roman (2014) focused on the views of some of the Roma elite concerning the presence of Roma beggars in the Helsinki area. Another study by Gaga (2015) looked at their perceptions of their health status and strategies before and during begging.
Additionally, a master’s thesis by Adolfsson (2014), from the University of Oslo’s Department of
21 Psychology, studied the social constructions of Roma migrants in the Norwegian media. This was the first study in this topic conducted in Norway.
Previous research into migrants and minorities, in general, has rarely used a systematic media analysis to understand the consequences of, and the underlying factors that shape media coverage of migrants and minorities. Questions, such as what are the effects and impact on public attitudes, policy outcomes or social relations have been poorly addressed and/or answered.
Other researchers who have studied negative media portrayals have viewed them as a reflection of broader societal representations and a possible catalyst force that influences people, group relations and institutions (Mortensen 2018). Moreover, the media can potentially represent a realm of participation for these groups; one where they can make themselves heard and visible, and can build their identities (Bleich, Bloemraad, and Graauw, 2015).
One anthropology study claimed that Danish people usually held strong opinions about the presence of ethnic minorities in the country, despite the fact that few Danes interacted with them on a regular basis. This study implied that this was the result of media coverage and its representations of this minority group (Hervik and Nævnet for Etnisk Ligestilling 2002)
In sum, the question of migrant Romanian beggars in Sweden has been insufficiently explored by academic research, especially from the standpoint of their visibility in the media, as well as concerns media ecology, agenda-setting theory, and framing. The overall aims of agenda- setting research can be extended to cover the specific migrant and minority group of Romanian beggars, because if the media’s news and stories about migrants and minorities consistently have
22 a social, criminal or economic-threat frame, they may present this group– as in the case of terrorist groups – as deeply problematic for society as a whole (Bleich, Bloemraad, and Graauw,
2015).
One study, into the effects of the media exposure of diverse sexual minorities and more liberal attitudes among young people from western societies, revealed that the media’s representation of LGBT visuals and imagery was likely to lead to more positive perceptions of sexual minorities amongst the younger population. The clear shift in the portrayal of gay people in the popular media provided a platform with which to isolate this effect methodologically. The researchers posited that the greater the level of media pervasiveness within a country, the more likely it would be that a young individual would display a greater tolerance towards homosexuality and other minority groups. Moreover, the freer a society was in terms of its freedom of speech and the press, the more tolerant its people would be towards the LGBT community. This could be due to the fact that media images and portrayals of LGBT actors may function as role models, not only enacting social debate but also enhancing other LGBT people to ‘come out of the closet’ to family members and loved ones. Thus, they concluded that the media’s representation of gay people – in conjunction with increased personal contact and familiarity with LGBT depictions and models – led to greater tolerance and positive attitudes towards sexual minorities, even when the media portrayals did not necessarily shed a positive light on the LGBT community. What media did was to ignite debate and put new frames of reference on homosexuality, within multiple domestic contexts (Ayoub and Garretson, 2017).
For instance, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s (GLAAD) Annual
Report, “Where we are on TV” – a report about LGBT inclusion and media representations –
23 lists where minority groups see themselves represented in the media, thus reinforcing their sense of affirmation in a positive way. It is a sure way of showing approval of their identity and self- worth; hence visibility can boost self-confidence and self-worth. The same report states that when people see something represented in the media, they essentially become better acquainted with who those people are and a sense of closeness to and a better understanding of them.
Conversely, the manner of their portrayal, especially in larger media formats is double-sided, as a so-called “burden of representations” emerges, which can lead to a reinforcement of the undesired traits of the specific groups (“Where We Are on TV Report - 2018” 2018).
One longitudinal study about the mass media's construction of gender, race, sexuality, and nationality, analysed the Danish news media's communication about visible minorities from
1971–2004. It concluded that the news media’s representation contributed to stereotypical images of visible minorities, and six stereotypes emerged: ‘immigrants who arrive in Denmark in floods’, ‘the criminal immigrant’, ‘the oppressed immigrant woman’, ‘the veiled woman’, ‘the sexually aggressive Muslim male’, and ‘the unintegrated immigrant’ (Andreassen, 2005).
Furthermore, the same research concluded that visible minorities in Denmark were presented as non-integrated into the Danish society, and that integration was a predominant theme in the media’s narrative. The media and other media actors (journalists, politicians, interviewees, etc.) did not differentiate between visible minorities’ nationality, ethnicity, religion or background.
Minorities were always referred to as a homogenous group. This led the author of the study to posit that the media’s representations had a stronger influence in shaping the views of the Danes, because they (the Danes) did not really have any personal, social interaction with the members of the visible minorities on a regular basis. Additionally, Andreassen (2005) claimed that these
24 media stereotypes played an important role in the construction of the Danish nationality and of ethnic Danes’ self-perceptions. By presenting visible minorities in contrast to Danes and Danish ethnics, a binary opposition emerged of ‘us vs them’. The news media characterised the ethnically Danish population as a homogenous group that was constructed in the media with more positive behaviour. According to the image created through the media representations a close examination of Danish society would show “a racially-divided society in which ethnic
Danes and visible minorities belonged to different social classes and had no interaction in neighbourhoods or at workplaces” (Andreassen 2005).
Several linguistic strategies enhanced ‘us vs them’ dichotomy. Visible minorities were frequently labelled as ‘ethnic’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Arabs’, ‘foreigners’ and ‘immigrants’, whereas the
Danes were not labelled in any way – as they represented the norm. Groups of people, who function as the norm, do not generally need further description in orders to make readers and viewers understand who or what they are. Moreover, visible minorities were often positioned as objects in the news media, placed in the position of being ‘spoken about’ and not ‘spoken with’ (Andreassen 2005).
Overall, content analysis of news depictions of ethnic minorities shows that they tend to be covered predominantly from a negative angle. Research emphasised that the tone of the news played a large role in the salience and interpretation of political issues. Exposure to negative, stereotypical, and problematizing news depictions of minorities and immigrants was able to perpetuate negative attitudes in society, whereas exposure to positive examples fostered tolerance. Negative news portrayals of minority groups were widespread and exposure to these kinds of message cultivated threat perceptions and prejudice (Meeusen and Jacobs, 2017).
25 A Flemish study revealed that the public did indeed differentiate between minority groups. The most positive attitudes were towards LGBT groups and the most disliked group was the Roma, where only 7.8% of news stories concerning them had a positive tone. The study found that news items about Roma, North African and Eastern European groups had a negative tone more often than news about LGBT, and that the Roma received the most negative news coverage. The study also found that ethnic minority groups are were often depicted as the cause of a problem in negative news stories (Meeusen and Jacobs 2017).
26 4. Theoretical Framework
This chapter presents the theoretical concepts of visibility, framing and agenda-setting and examines their uses and implications. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first introduces the concept of visibility and its components; from definitions and models that relate to power, the role of communication media in the field of visibility, media representations and the effects of mediated visibility. The second part looks closely into the process of the construction of media and focuses on the theories of second level agenda setting and framing. The final of the chapter explains the developed theoretical model of visibility, to be employed to meet the aims of the research. This analytical model represents an attempt to conceptualise and adapt all of the aforementioned theoretical concepts to align with the research questions and the purpose of the study.
Visibility, Visible and the Invisible
Something cannot be seen and unseen at the same time, because the ‘seen” and the
‘unseen’ entirely occupy the domain of the visible. The invisible continually contributes to is visible and vice versa. Because of this, visibility itself can only be understood as a notion of virtuality and not actuality (Brighenti 2008). In order to define visibility, it is first important to shift the focus from visibility to the visible, in order to understand the differences better.
It is difficult to draw a clear boundary between visibility and visuality, since visibility combines both the sensory and representational registers. Thus, the visible embodies a middle- ground; a domain of facticity – the origin of all possible factuality – and semioticity, the origin of all meaningfulness. It is a complex terrain where a continuum between what can be seen and
27 what can be said is laid out. In the field of visibility, the visible and the articulable are co-present, hence the difference between the two meanings is not one of nature, but of degree. Therefore, visibility encompasses two distinct meanings that are often confused: a more literal meaning, pertaining to the immediate sensory sphere (salience); and a metaphorical or symbolic one, pertaining to the set of symbolic meanings that are attached to a particular phenomena and communicated via the media (pregnances) ( Brighenti 2008; Wildgen, 2010; Mateus, 2017)
The sensory dimension and the symbolic one intermix implying two distinct modes of viewing the world. This leads to the idea that visibility is more of a social process rather than simply an appearance or image (Brighenti 2008, 2012, 2017; Mateus, 2017). Moreover, as
Mateus (2017) claims “Visibility could be seen as a special arrangement of visible and invisible movements encompassing disclosure and cloaking operations through which one moves in social interplay” (Mateus, 2017).
Visibility as a form of social life
Drawing on Goffman’s idea that social life comes in the form of presentation, there is a continuum between presentation and perception. If perception exists, then it follows that there is something to be perceived or something that is deliberately presented to the eye: what Brighenti calls the percipiendum (Brighenti, 2017).
This percipiendum is generated by the make-up of social life, which, in itself, is not only
“extensive-positional-relational” but also intensive-significant: Mathematician, Rene Thom, the father of the “physics of meaning”, termed it “pregnant” (Brighenti. 2017; Wildgen 2010). The basic meaning of the term “pregnant”, which come from the German adjective “prägnant” means
28 that “…something perceived, enounced, remembered has outstanding properties, which catch attention, make it relevant, important in a specific situation…” (Wildgen, 2010). Perception is related to the principles of the natural science (“saliences”), but the seeing eye – the “tool” we use to perceive – is not only a biological entity, it is also a virtual gaze, whose function is to link the social animal to a relationship. Therefore, what we know is that there is another dimension of life – an anorganic one that is different from the material, biological one (Brighenti 2017;
Wildgen, 2010).
The perceptible – or the visible – remains distinct from functions, models, and principles, and possesses its own set of rules, which are non-coded forms of immanence. “The visible cannot be resolved into either a field of distributions, or a field of visibility and inter-visibilities; nor can it be deduced as a systemic emergent property…” (Brighenti, 2017).The field of the visible is not equivalent to that of the simply visual; the visible is a prolongation of the visual.
Here, prolongation is seen as a connection between the metaphysical elements of a composite mechanism or dynamic (Brighenti 2008, 2012) There is a constant complicit coming together of the visible and the invisible, where the invisible is the pregnant. The constitution of the visible is that of the prolongation of the visual impregnated with the symbolic (Brighenti 2007, 2008,
2017). For example, symbols are specific relations in the fields of visibility (such as images, gestures, and representations) and they are what render the visible. The symbol is an image under control; although images are never fully controllable, because they are at the root of social life which means that the virtuality of images is of the same type as the virtuality of the social
(Brighenti, 2017, 2008). Nature is imageal in the sense that they images constantly produced
29 natural products. A fully controllable image would implicitly mean fully controlling nature, which is, so far, unrealistic and impossible.
Both affective and psychic lives are associated with images. It is due to images that psychic life contains a social dimension (Brighenti, 2017). Social processes, such as power relations, morality, charisma etc. can never be resolved into forms of pure salience, but are taken as a force that is propagated throughout a space such as air bathes the globe (Brighenti, 2017).
Because visibility inheres in configurations, connections, forces, mechanisms, associations, regimes, strategies, practices, and situated activities, visibility is not always a quality that inheres in the social. Nevertheless, it is important for forming thresholds, drawing boundaries, and defining the relational territories of the social. Here, various processes can emerge through visibility: focusing the attention, establishing forms of respect, affirming hierarchies and so on (Brighenti, 2008).
30
Figure 2: The relationship between social life, the visible, visibility and mediated visibility
Models of visibility
Brighenti (2007, 2008, 2017) and Mateus (2017) argue that visibility is more than a visual representation, rather it is a complex concept defined at the intersection of aesthetics
(relations to perception) and politics (relations of power), and it is where the connection is made to the symbolic. There is an asymmetrical relation between the “watcher” and the “watched” that rarely finds itself in a perfect equilibrium (Brighenti, 2007). Through the configurations of visibility, relationships are stabilised and power effects – which are not always absolute – are determined Brighenti proposes three different models of visibility: as recognition, as control, and as spectacle (Brighenti, 2008). These are examined in more depth below.
The model of visibility as “recognition”
The first model proposed posits that visibility is closely associated with recognition. This model is based on the Hegelian concept of recognition, where the existence of human beings is constituted through mutual recognition. At least four types of recognition can be identified: categorical, individual, personal and spectacular (Brighenti, 2008).
31 1. Categorical recognition is urban recognition par excellence, because it is exchanged among strangers. It stems from the simple everyday typification of people ( Brighenti, 2008).
2. The second type is usually performed by the state, in relation to the population. It is the individual recognition or the process of identification that is exercised by authorities or other figures of the sovereign, through the means of identity cards, fingerprints or registries. All of these instruments of classification and control are accompanied by the so- called ‘gaze of the state’, a way of seeing that directs a way of intervention and action (Brighenti, 2008). Brighenti (2008) claims that “the centralist gaze filters the multiciplity of social life, and reduces the plurality of lived experiences to fit into certain limits, in order to improve legibility in the management of phenomena concerning the population.”
3. The third type of recognition is rooted in Goffman’s conceptualisation of personal knowledge. Thus, personal recognition gives entitlement to initiate contact or to foster a direct relationship with another person. In more simple terms, speaking to someone you know (Brighenti, 2008).
4. Spectacular recognition is the last form of recognition and is at the intersection of two worlds, the ordinary and extraordinary. ”Celebrities, heroes, and media figures are technically strangers to their audience, even as those audience members feel they know the celebrity personally and react accordingly” (Brighenti, 2008)
All the aforementioned forms of recognition intertwine but do not perfectly overlap. Where they do overlap, interesting sociological cases emerge such as: • Personal recognition without individual recognition (people with whom we occasionally speak, but whose names we do not know)
• The conflict between categorical and personal recognition (social types from which we expect a certain behavior, which is not forthcoming)
• The short circuit between categorical and individual recognition (the circuit of criminalisation of immigrants) (Brighenti, 2008)
32 The model of visibility as “control”
The second model is based on Foucault’s work of the formation of a disciplinary society.
This model presents an antithetical scenario of visibility, by counteracting the dynamics of recognition. It is more of a form of subjugation; the imposition of behavior and a means of control rather than recognition (Brighenti, 2008).
In modern society, which is considered as a disciplinary society, visibility means deprivation of power.
“Disciplinary power imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility. In discipline, it is in the subjects who have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them. It is the fact of being constantly seen, of being always able to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection” (Brighenti, 2008)
The simple fact of being aware of one’s visibility status – and not the fact of being effectively under control – efficaciously influences behavior. Research into the surveillance processes is founded upon Foucault’s analysis, but it has somewhat transformed its point of departure. Once one accepts that surveillance can be interpreted as the specific management of the relative (Brighenti, 2008) visibilities of people, one notes that surveillance has become methodical and automatized in contemporary society. The vision – by definition non-reciprocal – that is inherent in surveillance also gives rise to a qualitatively different way of seeing
(Brighenti, 2008).
Because the subjects under surveillance cannot see who is observing them and cannot establish direct eye-to-eye contact with them, the subjects always seem – in a certain sense – to be suspect, if not guilty, merely because they are being observed unidirectionally. A
33 dehumanisation of the observed, and indirectly of the observer, is inherent to unidirectional gaze
(Brighenti, 2008).
The model of visibility as “the spectacular”
The ambivalence of visibility is best evidenced by the third described form: spectacular visibility. What characterises the spectacle is that it exists in a regime that is separate from everyday life. For the critical theorists, the spectacle is a set of images, detached from life but simultaneously proposed as an illusory (ideological) form of unity: “The spectacle is not a collection of images, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images” (Brighenti, 2008).
Relationships are stabilised and power effects are determined, via the configurations of visibility, but these effects are not always univocal. An opposition, between recognition and control, highlights that visibility is a two-edged sword: it can confer power, but it can also take it away; it can be a source of both empowerment and disempowerment (Brighenti, 2008).
Additionally, stigma is an interactional visibility device in this sense; a negative oral characteristic can be associated with any physical sign, but in order for this to work, it needs to be perceivable.
The specific effects of the different forms of visibility allow one to conceptualise the creation of SUBJECT positions in the field of visibility. The political and normative dimension of the visible – corresponding to every definition of a field of visibility – are demands and tensions which endeavour to establish a connection between what CAN BE SEEN and WHAT
SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be seen; between who and who cannot see others (Brighenti,
34 2008). Spectacular visibility is predominantly present in the fields of marketing and mass-media and communication. Both fields share a common feature of the “struggle of being displayed”.
This feature is even more predominant in media, and is seen as a form of mass voyeurism and passivity. This is because the media renders social life, by selecting, cutting and editing social events in order to fit a certain format, similar to theatre pieces, performances, and exhibitions
(Brighenti, 2010). Moreover, the spectacular is ambiguously located near individual and personal recognition; because of the fact the viewers have become addicted to the possibility of watching other people closely, through electronic mass media, especially TV. Thus, for celebrities or other super-visible individuals, the struggle for visibility becomes a struggle for individuality.
Visibility and power
Recognition and visibility are not linked in a straight-forward way. Whereas the model of visibility as recognition is rooted in the idea that visibility confers power, the second model starts from s diametrically opposite premise, that invisibility strengthens power. The third model is in between the two of them, since it highlights very well the ambivalence of visibility, as being more of a social relationship between people mediated by images. Nevertheless, for all three models, the secret lies at the core of power (Brighenti, 2008; 2007).
Therefore Brighenti (2010) argues that power can be seen as a form of external visibility
(visibility of effects), associated with an internal one (invisibility of identification). The power effects are visible to all, but can be difficult to understand where the power is fostered. Visibility asymmetries are therefore power asymmetries; “they see but they cannot be seen by the normal eye”. The issue of access to sites of visibility becomes a crucial political question (Brighenti,
35 2007, 2008). These sites of visibility represent the space where tensions and disputes over the visible occur, in order to define new normative conditions. In turn the new norms are nothing more than the sum of interdependent and ambivalent effects of each visibility regime, which are a repeated, agreed upon, and more or less settled pattern of interaction (Brighenti, 2008, 2012,
2017; Mateus, 2017).
Thus, it is difficult to outline a clear differentiation between visuality and visibility.
Instead, the differences between these forms come from the specific configurations assumed by the field of visibility, and the different regimes of visibility, where media are only structures that configure the asymmetry of visibilities (Brighenti, 2008).
Here, we are talking about a field of visibility as the object, whose main feature lies in the ability to displace social positions strategically, through selectivity, regulations, and the stratification of individuals and social happenings (Mateus, 2017). Moreover, Thompson (2005) and Mateus (2010) argue that making something visible is no longer something that is done unintentionally; rather it is an explicit strategy of individuals, who know very well that mediated visibility can be a weapon in their daily struggles. This is where communication media comes into play; we cannot understand the changing relationship between power and visibility in our societies by neglecting the role of communication media.
Visibility and the role of communication media
Communication technologies play an important role in how the visible is inscribed in social reality and how the process of shaping visibility reveals its double-sworded effect: i.e. of potential empowerment or disempowerment. The role of contemporary communication media is
36 essential in understanding visibility, because mediated visibility has become the instrument through which social and political battles are waged (Mateus, 2017). Thus, mediated visibility is the vehicle through which these social and political battles draw attention to certain situations or individuals; so, it acts as symbolic capital (Thompson 2005). Mediated visibility positions itself at the core of understanding the political and social struggles (Mortensen, 2018), because it takes the form of a supply and demand market, where the question cam easily emerge: what is worth being seen and at what price (Brighenti, 2007).
In addition, media are key objects of visibility because of their ability to capitalise attention through modulating visibility (Mateus, 2017). The modulation occurs as a result of the ambiguity of the two dimensions of visibility, the literal and the metaphorical. Since the two dimensions are difficult to separate – as the boundaries are unclear between – media has the power to turn something visible and perceptible (a sensory experience) into something that is collectively recognisable and notorious (a symbolic dimension) (Mateus, 2017). Mateus posits that because of this, visibility is no longer just a matter of “showing something out there, but mostly about making something “showable”. In other words, media is acts as an agent over visibility, which needs to be worked upon in order to be able to be visualised (Mateus, 2017).
AS an example, let’s examine today’s celebrities, where many so-called stars gain social approval because media tends to function on this dual dimension of visibility. The Kardashians and other social media influencers have become role models for their audiences. The followers and fans grant them certain values, despite the main reasons for their popularity being relatively unclear (e.g., professions or extraordinary achievements). In this sense, “mediated visibility is easily confused and overlaps with values, such as sincerity (the human character becomes
37 notorious), authenticity (emotions become notorious), immediacy (the disappearance of the medium becomes conspicuous), and transparency (arcanum imperii is constantly exposed)”.
This, media are great tools to diffuse attention and one of the most effective means to tilt and adjust and regulate the public’s gaze and collective attention. Today’s media is the main delivery mechanism of visibility relationships, because the media is not only an instrument or a weapon, but rather an arena of public attention in which public attention itself is distributed and drawn, on various competing issues according to a number of variables of visibilities Mateus,
2017; Brighenti, 2010).
Media, visibility and publicness
In media and communication studies, media plays an important role in the channelling of the public synchrony of attention, therefore a vital component of visibility is publicness. Since media appear as arenas that contain and circulate public topics of discussion, publicness represents an aesthetic and symbolic synchrony of attention, where it is essential to attain full visibility (Mateus, 2017; Brighenti, 2010).
Therefore, visibility and publicness go hand in hand. When a happening becomes public it has passed the frontier of not only becoming visible but also of synchronic attention. In this sense, visibility entails a public aspect; this is the reason why it is an important object of communication studies. What publicness actually means is simply the quality of being public, open, and accessible to collective scrutiny. Hence, it is where the public gaze comes into existence (Mateus, 2017; Brighenti, 2010).
38 Therefore, publicness and media are interdependent, because publicness yields the synchronisation of collective attention: visibility (Mateus, 2017).
Social Representations
Since visibility is a field of production of subjects, media plays the role of the creator of public awareness by channelling maximum attention and full awareness towards certain topics or people such as celebrities, actors, deviants or even ordinary people (Mateus, 2017).
By creating and sustaining visibility, media is able to influence the social recognition of people or other events. Thus, social representations are a key component in the process of creating and maintaining visibility (Mateus, 2017; Brighenti, 2010). Put simply, social representations are “bundles of consistently packaged information” and can be verbal, discursive and visible (more than visual) imagistic representations. An analogy can be made with the tourist guides where the information about the most important attractions worthy of tourists’ attention is usually pre-packaged; it is presented in a quick, sketchy and stereotypical fashion (Mateus,
2017).
Nevertheless, when it comes to people, the display is more complex than it sounds. In the case of humans, it is more than a technical matter. It becomes a social and political matter, since it puts forward perceptivity and visibility as two primordial notions. As a result, shaping and managing people’s visibilities requires huge efforts. All pf these efforts and work of reciprocal management of attention that are entailed by social representations take place through the establishment of precise thresholds that separate and bring into contact what is observable with what is not (Mateus, 2017).
39 The positioning of a subject below or above the thresholds of correct visibility relates to the problem of managing one’s social image (Brighenti 2007, 2008). Conversely, media’s representation of immigration, today, is super-visible and has become ubiquitously constant in social imaginary. This super visibility reinforces emotional reactions, such as tremor and surprise, despair and suffering. Super visibility can also be a risk if it increases the banality of images (Brighenti, 2008, 2012, 2017; Mateus, 2017). For example, racial and sexual minorities that are not granted recognition become invisible; hence, they are deprived, because there are certain thresholds of what is called “fair visibility”, with lower and upper limits. Below the lower threshold, one is socially excluded, whereas reaching the upper limit and above leads to supra visibility, where “everything you do becomes gigantic to the point that it paralyzes you. Media representations of migrants as criminals are supra visible as are many forms of moral panic selectively focused onto actors deemed to be representative of moral minorities” (Brighenti,
2008, 2012, 2017; Mateus, 2017). Images are extremely powerful for directing and misdirecting attention, essentially because they are seductive. Images that constantly move us may also have the paradoxical effect of freezing us, so we become passive spectators. “Super visibility banalizes everything.”(Mateus, 2017)
One point that communications and media studies should consider is the risk that the successive, elusive and reiterated modulations of visibility, puts the field of visibility out of control (Brighenti, 2008, 2012, 2017; Mateus, 2017).
40 Effects of Mediated Visibility
A further consequence is that a new site of visibility emerges, the so-called ‘politics of recognition’ where all the struggles for recognition take place and where the lack of recognition or misrecognition is nothing more than the effects of all these struggles. Therefore, claims for visibility by minority groups or other leaders are double-sided, as they can lead to denial or an enactment of recognition. “Distortions in visibility lead to distortions in social representations, distortions through visibility” (Brighenti, 2007, 2008, 2017).
The underlying thing is that visibility is curdled into representations that sediment in time mostly (not exclusively) due to the ways media set up empirical visibilities and influence visibility’s contingent compositions, re-compositions, and inter-compositions (Brighenti, 2007).
It may thus have a rippling effect on society and lead to distortions in the representation of minority groups (media discourse analysis), but also distortions in the visibility of minority groups (sexual, racial, and ethnic) which could lead to important misrepresentations. For these reasons it is crucial to tackle hypervisibility as an extreme effect of an intense modulation perpetrated by communication technologies (Mateus, 2017; Brighenti, 2010).
Hypervisibility may mask reality, and an excess of visibility leads to an important paradox: by granting visibility to certain issues or aspects of social life, others become obliterated. A situation that is similar to the disproportionate noise that negatively impacts communication. What the media does is to deepen this paradox and to present the world as if the medium could be erased: “they create a strong familiarity feeling while obliterating their own mediation. Hypervisibility gives rise to new forms of opacity that are formed, not through secrecy, but by the opposite: pan-visibility” (Mateus, 2017; Brighenti, 2010).
41 This is especially so in the case of ethnic, racial, and sexual minority groups; just as invisibility leads to lack of recognition, hypervisibility reveals how social representations lean towards and are always dangerously close to stereotyping. Therefore, minorities who benefit from hypervisibility can easily become misrepresented, distorted, disempowered and may feel inferior (Brighenti, 2008, 2012, 2017; Mateus, 2017).
In another example, women who claim the right to become visible and who aspire to more recognition, are quickly categorised as incorrigible, whereas when it comes to gay people, benefiting from visibility runs the risk of imposing a pre-conceived “correct” way of how “to be gay” (Mateus, 2017).
Media visibility is modulated with the help of media representations and media coverage of suffering of various kinds may promote different types of moral attitudes towards those who suffer, as well potentially creating moral anaesthesia or even convivence. The ambivalence of media visibilities can potentially lead to contradictory outcomes (Mateus, 2017). On one hand, the hypervisibility of news messages produces repercussions and distortions in other social fields; such as, the political and the legal domains (for example, reforms, changes of law etc.)
(Mateus, 2017). On the other hand, a more optimistic view claims that global visibility of suffering inevitably brings with it the potential truly to care about estranged and suffering people
(Mateus, 2017).
Agenda Setting and Framing in Mediating Visibility
The media makes messages visible, whilst they simultaneously make the structure of such visibility invisible. The objective of media studies is to give visibility to those specific
42 effects of media technologies which would otherwise be hidden by the communicated messages
(Brighenti, 2008, 2010). However, because – as we have observed above – affections through visibility take place within certain rhythmic thresholds, rhythms that are pushed too much can also turn affections into reactive anaesthesia (Brighenti, 2010).
Seeing invites believing, and the truth is nothing more visible than an opinion. Brighenti
(2010) claims that: “several of our problems come from the fact that in most cases the truth is markedly less visible than the sum of the opinions circulating. The issue with media visibilities concerns not simply opinions as cognitive positions, but also the elicitation of position-taking.
Because of the presence of a media frame, there is no neutral stance in this type of visibility.” (Brighenti, 2010)
Both agenda-setting theory and framing theory have emerged as a prolongation of the analytical theory of visibility, because from the beginning there was an attempt to distinguish the
“what” from the ‘how’ analytically, and the mere visibility of a news story from the type of framing in which it is presented. They are complementary and make for a better understanding of how media creates and maintains visibility through media representations (Mateus, 2017;
Brighenti, 2010). Therefore, we must consider how the visible (the “message”) is presented and how it reaches the viewers. These two aspects of informing the content and reaching the recipient correspond to the acts of framing and affecting (Brighenti, 2010).
Agenda Setting Theory
McCombs and Shaw (1972) were the first proponents of the term agenda setting and the pioneers of the theory that basically discusses how the mass media influences a certain issue to
43 out it on the public agenda. Agenda-setting is an effective tool for understanding how certain topics that are covered by the media raise the public’s awareness towards the emphasized subject. Despite that fact, the media is not necessarily such a powerful and decisive a factor in shaping public opinion, but at least it has the power to tell/show the public what to think about.
Nevertheless, scholars who examined agenda setting argued that, for governments or political leaders, public relations officers, communicators, the media could represent a tool to promote and shape the public agenda (McCombs and Shaw 1993). Thus, media acts as a gatekeeper and has the power to determine what is relevant. It holds agenda-setting powers through its selection of which information to report.
According to McCombs, Shaw, and Weaver (2014) stated that during its fifty years of existence, agenda setting has evolved into a broader theory, with several distinct areas, as follows:
• Basic agenda setting, whose core concept has remained the same (the salience of subjects that make it onto the public agenda). This is considered the first level of agenda-setting theory.
• Attribute agenda setting or the second level, which deals with the salience of the attributes of objects.
• Network agenda setting, a third level of the theory with a focus on the media’s networking of and its impact on the public agenda.
• Consequences of agenda setting on the public’s attitudes, opinions, and behaviours.
• Agenda-building: the factors that influence the building of the agenda (cultural or ideological factors, journalistic norms, and traditions, as well as intermedia influence, and individual journalistic views). Media outlets – especially the print media – are often associated with particular political viewpoints (Bleich, Bloemraad, and Graauw 2015).
44 • Agenda-melding: how we meld our personal views and experiences with the civic agendas of the media in order to make sense of what is happening to us.
With such a wide spectrum of areas, there are several operational definitions circulating within the field of agenda-setting research. Nevertheless, two distinct definitions seem to dominate: the agenda issues of the news and of the public. Moreover, with new forms of communication, such as social media, today’s scholars of agenda-setting can apply the theory §to a wider spectrum of channels and content – that extend beyond the traditional state of affairs. It has become what is called a “world of agendas”. One of the areas worth exploring by contemporary research endeavours is the psychology of agenda-setting (McCombs, Shaw, and
Weaver 2014).
Second-level Agenda Setting
Whereas the first level of agenda-setting is focused on the amount of coverage of an issue, second-level agenda setting examines the relative salience of the attributes of issues; i.e. how the issue is defined or represented (Weaver, 2007). However, research into the second level of agenda setting has overlooked an important component of the affect: the feelings, and emotions that are triggered in the public. Whereas character traits, framing issues or valence are important components of affects, they are considered to be more of a cognitive conceptualisation.
Emotions and feelings also play a crucial psychologically conceptualised role in second-level agenda-setting (Coleman and Wu, 2010).
Coleman and Wu (2010) are the proponents of the emotion as part of affective agenda setting. They conducted a study that looked into the emotional response of the public to the
45 media portrayals of some political candidates. Their study tested whether the viewers emotional responses were are correlated with the media's emotional-affective agenda and they compared the two dimensions, affect and cognitive assessments of traits, as well exploring the positive- negative valence. Even though numerous other studies investigated affective agenda-setting, the authors claimed that none had succeeded in capturing the affect as conceptualized in psychology.
Hence, They defined affect operationally, as the intensity of a certain felt emotion such as anger, fear, sadness, happiness, pride, etc.. Furthermore, the researchers argued that these emotional models were the most appropriate for understanding the persuasive nature of media influence
(Coleman and Wu, 2010).
The findings of their study revealed that the visual displays in TV news are strongly correlated to the public’s emotional response towards the candidates portrayed, but only in the negative dimension. The results confirmed that negative emotion causes viewers to think more deeply about their assessment and decision processes. A striking finding of the study – and one that potentially had greater implications – was that the affect’s cognitive dimension was less effective than the emotional one, in transferring the media’s agenda. Coleman and Wu (2010) argued that the brain processes the two components of affect differently, hence feeling angry, proud, hopeful, or afraid in response to a candidate has nothing to do with the cognitive way of assessing the traits of a candidate: e.g., dishonesty, morality, etc. Thus, this study clearly revealed that both cognitive and emotional evaluations are undoubtedly a necessary condition for second- level agenda setting theory (Coleman and Wu, 2010).
46 Framing Theory
The concept of framing is related to the agenda-setting tradition, but expands the research by focusing on the essence of the issues at hand rather than on any particular topic. The basis of framing theory is that the media focuses attention on certain events and then places them within a field of meaning.
Framing is an important topic, since all contents are essentially framed. The very definition of a social issue, as a series of events and items of news grouped together, presupposes a selection and, thus – indirectly – a frame. A frame makes it possible to give meaning to content: it literally in forms – puts into form – the reported events and news. Thus, the mediated vision depends on a frame of reference (Brighenti, 2010). In essence, framing theory suggests that how something is presented to an audience (called ‘the frame’) influences the choices people make about how to process that information. The frame creates a fundamental partitioning between visible and invisible events, as well as visible and invisible people and facts. Through the same single act, something is framed in and something else is also framed out. What is framed out is not only content that could potentially be framed in just by tilting the camera. Rather, what is framed out is – in a sense – the structure of the medium itself. The frame constantly reassures the viewer that all you see is all you need to know (Brighenti, 2010). Frames are abstractions that work to organise or structure message meaning. The most common use of frames is the frame that the news or media place on the information they convey. Television increasingly determines access to social existence (in our terms, visibility as recognition) but its ability to construct democratic visibility is curtailed by its messages’ dependence on the economic structure of its production; invisible because it is literally out of the frame (Brighenti, 2010).
47 Frames influence the audience’s perception of the news; in this way it could be construed as a form of second-level agenda setting – they not only tell the audience what to think about
(agenda-setting theory), but also how to think about that issue (second-level agenda-setting, framing theory) (Mccombs , 2011). Mccombs (1997) defines framing as “the selection of a restricted number of thematically related attributes for inclusion on the media agenda when a particular object is discussed”. Another definition posits that “framing incorporates a wider range of factors than priming and agenda-setting, which are both cognitive concepts” and “that frames are tied in with culture as a macrosocial structure” (Weaver and Choi, 2014).
Weaver (2007) compared second-level agenda-setting with framing and posited that both focus on how issues or other objects are depicted in the media, rather than on the amount of coverage; hence, they are similar in this regard, or identical. However, even if both theories deal with ways of thinking rather than the actual objects of the thinking, framing does not seem to include a broader range of cognitive responses. Second-level agenda setting, on the other hand, does seem to address this question and looks further, tackling moral evaluation, causal reasoning, appeals to principles and recommendations for treatment of problems.
A study by Valkenburg, Semetko, and De Vreese (1999) analysed how much news frames could influence the reader’s thoughts and ability to recall the information presented in a news story. The results showed that the way in which the news stories were framed had a significant effect on readers’ thoughts and information retrieval. Their study used a deductive four-way model, applied to two news stories, one more salient (a crime story) and one less salient (about the Euro). Depending on how the issue was framed, the reader’s listed more conflict and human- related thoughts in the case of the crime story, whereas in response to the Euro stories, they listed
48 more thoughts framed in terms of economic consequences (Valkenburg, Semetko, and De
Vreese, 1999). In terms of the reader’s ability to recall the information, for the crime story, the framing condition significantly affected the readers’ ability to recall information. These results suggest the more emotionally compelling the nature of the story negatively affected the readers’ retrieval of information. They did not remember the core information as well as the others who were exposed to other framing condition (Valkenburg, Semetko, and De Vreese 1999).
A further study investigated the effects of a journalistic story frame on the audience’s thoughts and feelings. It showed that news frames clearly evoked distinctive patterns in the activation of thoughts. Participants reported that the news frames they saw influenced the substantive focus of their thoughts. Even though the study did not seek to make any particular evaluation of the effects, the cognitive response data revealed frame-induced differences in the affective tone of response; hence, framing can have evaluative effects and can directly influence what enters the minds of audience members (Price, Tewksbury, and Powers 1997). Over the past decades, the popularity of the framing theory has increased and theorists argue that this is the result of its versatility and comprehensive nature; it can be employed in various forms to study different aspects of messages. Moreover, it is even suitable for systematic content analysis. But whether framing is more or less similar to second-level agenda setting, depends very much on how it is defined (Weaver, 2007).
Notwithstanding this, this study’s preferred operational definition is that of Entman
(1993), who suggests that to “frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem
49 definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993).
A Mediated Visibility Model for Roma Beggars
Visibility is a relatively new category of social theory. It appears to be a relational one, which means that the positions and properties of the objects in the field of visibility are meaningful, only in relation to other objects (Brighenti, 2008). For this study’s analysis, visibility was preferred in favor of a theory of the invisible, as the latter is not able to give indications that could be useful for ethnographic research and the study of social interactions.
Considering all these factors and the aim of the research, we developed an analytical model of media visibility for the Roma beggars. our model draws on the theoretical concepts discussed earlier, which were selected, summarised and conceptualised in accordance with the purpose of the study.
Identification of the concept
The current model embraces the idea of visibility in the form of a spectacle. Spectacular visibility is considered to be more appropriate as it entails the other two other forms of visibility as conceptualized by the literature: control, and recognition. Furthermore, spectacular visibility is more characteristic of media and communication studies; hence, representative for this study.
Our model posits the idea that the spectacle is a social relationship between people, mediated by images (the properties of the objects). In our case, this is the relationship between
Romanian beggars and readers of the Swedish press that is mediated by the Swedish Press. This mediation is done through images that are nothing more than social representations that render
50 the Romanian beggars visible (Mateus, 2017). The power effects could be more easily explored through visibility’s configuration of Romanian beggars in the media. Since effects are not always univocal, visibility is a two-edged sword (it confers power or takes it away). The form of spectacular visibility can also be valuable in better revealing the perceived effects among the group of Romanian beggars (Brighenti, 2008).
Dimensions of the model
The model proposes the idea that Romanian beggars are in the subject position within the field of media visibility. Here, the media discourse (political and normative dimension of the visible or social representation) is the result of tensions between WHAT CAN and SHOULD/
NOT be seen and WHO and CAN/CANNOT see others (Mateus, 2017; Brighenti, 2010). The spectacle entails that the viewer is able to watch other people closely, because media renders life by selecting, cutting and editing social events in order to fit a certain format – similar to a theatre play (Brighenti, 2010) where the ‘actors’ are Romanian beggars, the ‘audience’ the readers and the Swedish Press the ‘director’.
Given the aim of our research, our model encompasses two dimensions. One looks into these configurations of visibility, through the construction of representation:
4. What is the dominant media discourse in the Swedish Newspapers about the group of beggars from Romania?
The other looks at the subject position, more specifically, the ambivalence of the perceived effects of media visibility (either positive or negative) by Romanian beggars:
5. Are the beggars from Romania living in Sweden aware of their media representation by the Swedish Newspapers?
51 6. What are the perceived effects of visibility by the group of Romanian beggars and their current affairs?
Figure 3: Representation of the bi-dimensional theoretical model.This framework is used to address the research purpose of the study and help explore the relationship between media visibility of the Romanian beggars in the Swedish Press and the perceived effects of it by the group of Romanian beggars.. The first dimension corresponds to the first research questions (R1), whereas the second dimension corresponds to the other two research questions (R2 and R3)
Conceptualisation of dominant media discourse of Romanian beggars
The first dimension of the model aims to examine how the Swedish press creates and maintains the visibility of Romanian beggars through social representation (‘patterns of interaction’ in a ‘frame of reference’). Mediated vision is dependent on a frame, because the very definition of a social issue entails a selection; hence a frame (Brighenti, 2010). Therefore how the visible (the ‘message’) is presented and how it reaches the viewers corresponds to the acts of framing and affecting (Coleman and Wu, 2010). The frame constantly reassures the reader that all they see is all they need to know; hence, the reality of the social issue is not more visible than
52 an opinion (Brighenti, 2010). Brighenti (2010) claimed that “several of our problems come from the fact that in many cases truth is markedly less visible than the sum of the opinions circulating”
(Brighenti, 2010). Therefore the issue of the media visibility of Romanian beggars concerns not only opinions as cognitive positions but also the elicitation of position taking (moral evaluation).
Due to the media frame, there is no neutral stance in this type of visibility.
The dominant media discourse is conceptualised in the model, hereby as social representation with two components: patterns of interaction (a synonym for ‘topics’) and frame of reference (‘media frame’). The theoretical framework of second-level agenda setting and framing are used to analyse the media discourse. These theoretical frameworks help shed some light on how the Swedish press selects, cuts and edits the issue of Romanian beggars, in order to fit a certain format(frame) and how to think about it Brighenti, 2010). Second-level agenda setting complements framing’s theoretical concept, as defined by Entman, by further tackling the elements of the frame: it promotes a certain problem definition, a moral evaluation and causal reasoning; it appeals to principles and makes recommendation concerning the issue of Romanian beggars. Second-level agenda setting examines the relative salience of the attributes of issues.
Put simply, how the issue is defined and represented (Weaver, 2007). Furthermore, it takes a step forward and looks into the component of the affect: the feelings and emotions that are triggered in the public.
Emotions and feelings, psychologically conceptualised (defined as the intensity of a certain emotion felt, such as anger, fear, sadness, happiness, etc.), are the most suitable for understanding the persuasive nature of media influence, because of their higher efficiency in transferring the media agenda (Coleman and Wu, 2010). Other studies also suggested that the
53 more emotionally compelling the nature of the story, the more this negatively the readers’ retrieval of information (Valkenburg, Semetko, and De Vreese 1999).
Considering all of these factors, super visibility takes place within certain thresholds; rhythms that push and when pushed too much can reinforce emotional reactions such as tremor and surprise, despair or suffering and can contribute to the banality of images and moral anaesthesia (Brighenti, 2010; Mateus, 2017).
Figure 4: Representation of the first dimension of the theoretical model.This dimension addresses the dominant media discourse and looks at how the Swedish press is creating and maintaining visibility of the Romanian beggars through social representation embedded in a media frame. The social representation of beggars is created by the media discourse with the help of Media Frame as defined by Entman, as well as of the Tone of Voice and Emotional responses triggered.
Conceptualisation of ‘perceived’” media effects
The second dimension aims to look at the media visibility effects from the ‘subject’ position, Romanian beggars; hence, the perceived effects. Drawing on Goffman’s belief that presentation and perception are a continuum; if perception exists, there is something to be
54 perceived or something is deliberately presented to the eye, the so-called
‘percipiendum’ (Brighenti, 2017). We posit that this percipiendum encompasses more than the public eye; in our case, it also encompasses the Romanian beggars’ eye. Therefore, the perceived effects of media are conceptualised as the gaze of the Romanian beggars concerning media visibility effects: what they look at from their stance and how they perceive the media visibility effect (Brighenti, 2017). If media visibility is a matter of not only showing something out there, but making something showable, then the Romanian beggars should perceive something.
Media visibility effects relate to the subject’s positioning within thresholds of visibility, with a lower limit (invisibility) and an upper limit (hyper visibility). Thus far, the theory of visibility has not been able to indicate any reliable measurements to determine the boundaries of invisibility, visibility or hypervisibility. Nevertheless, from the beginning, this research assumed that the group of Romanian beggars was hypervisible in the media; therefore, our model does not directly tackle invisibility (lack of recognition) and its potential effects (social exclusion).
Consequently, the proposed analytical model of visibility will focus on type of effects related to hypervisibility. The proponents and theoreticians of visibility have claimed that for ethnic, sexual or minority groups, media visibility has the following effects; categorised as:
• Negative effects: misrepresentation, distortion of reality, disempowerment, inferiorization, moral anaesthesia and convivance.
• Neutral effects: Repercussions in the legal and political domain
• Positive effects: Potential for really caring for estranged people who are suffering
55
Figure 5: Representation of second dimension of the theoretical model. The second dimension addresses the perceived effects of the mediated visibility from subject position, more specifically the Romanian’s beggar perspective.
Due to the fact that at least 90% of the Roma in Romania live in poverty and at least 25% lack the registration documents required to gain access to education, this study embraces the idea that they are less likely to be able to read Swedish or English at least; hence their awareness of their media representation in the Swedish press is limited. Nonetheless, because of their hypervisibility, at least some of effects should be perceived by them.
Given the aim of this research, our bi-dimensional model seeks to provide simple empirical data about the relationship between the media and Romanian beggars (and its effects) and not to determine the causes. Therefore, employing our developed theoretical framework will help us to explore this visibility relationship.
56 5. Methodology
This chapter explains the methods and the methodological literature that we examined and which motivated the choices made in the data gathering process; and discusses these. It lays out in detail: the rationale for choosing a mixed-methods research type, the scope of the selected methods, a presentation of content analysis and visual ethnography, the sampling process for the quantitative part of the design and the procedures and steps followed throughout the data gathering process. The chapter begins with the research design and then presents the methods of content analysis and visual ethnography, followed by the procedures followed in gathering of both types of data: quantitative and qualitative.
Research Design
The study seeks to explore and elicit empirical data about the relationship between the media visibility of a minority group – Romanian beggars – and their perceived effects of this. It is more of a ‘what’ and ‘how’ type of scientific inquiry than a ‘why’ type. Therefore, we developed a bi-dimensional theoretical framework of visibility in order to facilitate the analysis of the aforementioned relationship.
Given the research’s goal and the developed theoretical model, we deemed a tentative research design, as defined by Creswell (2014), as the most suitable and acceptable. This design is mainly used to gather information about the current status of a phenomenon and to provide answers for questions such as out (how and what) (Creswell, 2014). This type of research design is often used as a precursor to later extensive quantitative explorations in the field (Creswell
57 2014). Furthermore, a thorough analysis has the potential to provide important recommendations in practice and may yield rich empirical data.
Given this study’s research questions and the fact that it was a bi-dimensional study, we preferred to use a mixed methods approach. A mixed methods approach is recommended for situations when the researcher explores new grounds, and quantitative results are compared to qualitative data therein, for a better understanding of the problem. For our study, this meant that we compared the initial quantitative results (i.e. the frame used to render beggars visible) with the qualitative data collection and used qualitative research to examine how the beggars perceived the potential effects of their media visibility (Sandelowski 2014).
Therefore, the design was broken down into phases, each with its’ own corresponding research method: content analysis and ethnography. The first phase comprised the collection of data for content analysis (media discourse), and the second phase covered the collection of ethnographic data (the perceived media effects) (Creswell 2003).
In the following section, we present and discuss the two research methods, including their advantages and disadvantages. Additionally we will explain the steps taken and procedures of the data collection for each of the two dimensions of the research design in greater detail.
Content Analysis of Media Frames
Content analysis is valuable in organisational research, because it allows researchers to recover and examine the nuances of organisational behaviours, stakeholder perceptions, and societal trends (Mckee, 2003). Content analysis facilitates an understanding of the messages being presented to the public, but cannot determine the extent to which audiences'
58 understandings are influenced by media representations of specific issues. An advantage of content analysis is that it “can provide a useful overview of how a particular issue is being represented in a large number of texts” (Mckee 2003).
However, since media frames are relatively abstract variables, they are difficult to identify and difficult to code in content analysis. Because it is also difficult to neutralise the impact of the researcher, scholars have raised concerns about the reliability and validity of such a method of studying media frames. Nevertheless, one study addressed this concern. This study explained how other approaches had tried to capture the latent or cultural meanings of a text, which became problematic in terms of reliability. After reviewing the most common five methods (hermeneutic, linguistic, manual holistic, computer assisted and, deductive approach), the authors outlined an empirical method that they suggested was a more reliable and valid way of measuring a media frame and which was based on the identification of the elements of frame
(Matthes and Kohring 2008). They argued that;
“The basic idea of this procedure can be described as follows. Similar to Miller and colleagues, we understand a frame as a certain pattern in a given text that is composed of several elements. These elements are not words but previously defined components or devices of frames. Rather than directly coding the whole frame, we suggest splitting up the frame into its separate elements, which can quite easily be coded in a content analysis. After this, a cluster analysis of those elements should reveal the frame (Kohring & Matthes, 2002). That means when some elements group together systematically in a specific way, they form a pattern that can be identified across several texts in a sample. We call these pattern frames.” (Matthes and Kohring, 2008)
59 Entman’s (1993) operational definition says that four frame elements constitute a frame: a problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and a treatment recommendation. If these elements are understood as variables, each of them can have several categories within a content analysis. A problem definition can consist of an issue and relevant actors who discuss the problem. A causal interpretation is an attribution of failure or success regarding a specific outcome. An evaluation can be positive, negative, or neutral and can refer to different objects.
Finally, a treatment recommendation can include a call for or against a certain action (Matthes and Kohring, 2008).
Taken all together, and according to its proponents;
This method combines the advantages of manual coding with the advantages of computerised analysis. The coding of frame elements is conducted manually, but the challenging task of identifying abstract, overarching patterns is done by the computer. Still, the cluster/frame is finally interpreted and contextualized by the researcher. The results revealed clear evidence for this line of reasoning (Matthes and Kohring, 2008).
IF the first dimension of our chosen model should look at how the Swedish press creates and maintains the visibility of Romanian beggars through social representation (“patterns of interaction” in a “frame of reference”) and where the dominant media discourse is conceptualised within a theoretical framework, developed as social representation with two components: patterns of interaction (synonym to “topics”) and the frame of reference, THEN
Matthes and Kohring’s (2008) content analysis method seems the most suitable for this study.
60 Visual Ethnography
The first method chosen – content analysis – facilitates an understanding of how messages are being presented to the public; therefore, it perfectly fits the first dimension of the study. However, it cannot determine the extent to which audiences' understandings are influenced by media representations of specific issues. The social world is not a laboratory Brighenti (2008) and therefore qualitative methods and ethnographic work is of crucial importance in visibility research. The second dimension of the study looks at understanding media visibility effects from the ‘subject’ position (Romanian beggars); of how and what they perceive of their media visibility. Thus, the visual ethnography method was considered more suitable for gathering the data. In the next section, this ethnographic work and method is discussed
The ethnographic enterprise is characterised by two main features. First, it conducts its research in vivo, in the places where the phenomena and the knowledge under consideration are produced (Brighenti 2008). Second, it makes naturalistic, but not behaviourist, assumptions about the social world by immersing itself in the middle of the phenomenon. Compared to other theories that merely seek to postulate, ethnography accepts the existence of a certain porosity.
Furthermore, ethnography is bound by dynamics of visibility, since what separates the visible from the invisible is a territory which is nothing other than the social (Brighenti 2008).
Despite the fact the ethnography is seen as being unable to produce explanatory models, the research into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ in ethnography reveals that these are only crude indicators of certain ways to interrogate the social. The researcher, who immerses themselves in the singularity of a place – by its very nature ethnographic – such as a crowded square or street, will not get very far by simply asking people why they do certain things (Brighenti, 2008). Therefore,
61 it is more useful to have the Romanian beggars explain how they do certain things, how they perceive this media visibility (Brighenti 2008). The better the description of the places or people observed, the more it raises questions about the causes of the observed phenomena. The pungent moments of a situation enable a researcher to grasp the tensions within them and eventually to understand better the forces within the context (Brighenti 2008). All of this observation and data gathering can be performed using a variety of tools, in the qualitative research traditions; among them: observation, content analysis (either visual or textual) and interviews (individual or group).
Interviews are one of the most common instruments for data collection, used in ethnographic studies, since they can be used to explore the views, experiences, beliefs, and motivations of individual participants (DiCicco, Bloom and Crabtree, 2006). There are three main kinds of research interviews: structured, open and semi-structured. Since our research design is based on a mixed-methods’ approach, with a quantitative content analysis being made beforehand, we chose a semi-structured interview tool.
Semi-structured interviews represent a combination of structured and open interviews, and are where a set of key questions are asked to pursue the main research areas of interest. This tool consists of a structure to be followed, but it also allows for flexibility, in order to explore certain responses. The questions act as a guideline, but the format is less rigid and allows for the exploration of information, relevant to the research purpose, that has not been thought of (Gill et al,, 2008).
62 Data Gathering Process
The data gathering processes were not identical, as the two methods chosen were complementary and embedded in a tentative research design whose purpose was to yield empirical data. Being a mixed methods approach, comprising quantitative and qualitative phase, the data collection was inherently different for each method. Furthermore, since the purpose of the research was to explore new ground, the initial quantitative results were to be compared with the qualitative results. Therefore, the procedures followed in the quantitative data collection will be discussed first and the qualitative steps afterwards. A sampling process and computer generated extraction followed the qualitative data collection
Quantitative data gathering
In order to be able to carry out a content analysis, we needed to select specific texts and articles. Therefore this procedure – the sampling process to collect quantitative data – comprised the following steps:
1. First, articles were selected from the library’s database, using the Retriever Software tool (See Figure 6). The selection criteria were:
2. Articles published in: Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, GoteborgsPosten, SydSvenskan. The reasoning for the selection of the four newspapers was to have: two major national printed newspapers (excluding tabloids) and two major local or regional printed newspapers. All the articles were in Swedish and were:
3. published between 01-01-2012 and 31-12-2018
4. used the search word: tiggare,
5. and also contained also the search words: “Rumänien, rumän, rumänsk “.
63
Figure 6: Articles in four publications - search based on specific words
6. The database was then refined, by removing the author, date, copyright text and captions, as well as those articles that contained the required words but were not journalistic pieces or that were irrelevant to the research topic. These pieces were removed because they did not follow the journalistic norms and traditions of a news article (e.g., Kalendariet: a program of the artistic and cultural life, where some artistic representations or exhibitions were about the Roma community or beggars, but which were not journalistic pieces).
7. Following that, we used WordStat to run a computerised analysis to identify abstract overarching patterns. WordStat comprises functions, such as word count and phrase frequency and topic identification, which make it a really useful tool for extensive textual analysis. WordStat effectively gathers the frequencies of specific words that are looked for in data and contains libraries with filler-words that can be used to exclude unimportant words from the analysis. Furthermore it can identify the emotions triggered throughout a sample of large texts as well as the tone of voice (negative, positive).
8. We selected a limit of 30 topics, and they were refined and merged together with other similar topics, in order to form a larger category. For example, the phrases “from Romanian and Bulgaria” and “Romanians and Bulgarians” were merged together and grouped into the
64 category “Romania and Bulgaria”. For the phrases’ analysis function, we set the lower limit value to three words and the maximum to ten.
9. We removed adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions and interjections, which appeared with a high frequency.
10. The computerised analysis generated the phrases’ frequency and overarching patterns (operationalised as “topics” by WordStat)
11. The researcher performed the coding of the frame elements, as well as the cluster/frame interpretation and contextualisation, manually.
Computer generated analysis -extraction of patterns of frame (“topics’)
WordStat’s user manual describes the program’s topic extraction feature thus;
“The Topic Extraction feature of WordStat attempts to uncover the hidden thematic structure of a text collection by applying a combination of natural language processing and statistical analysis. The main statistical procedure used for topic extraction in WordStat is a factor analysis. Technically speaking, such an extraction is achieved by computing a word x document frequency matrix, or alternatively by segmenting documents into smaller chunks and computing a word x segment frequency matrix. Once this matrix is obtained, a factor analysis with Varimax rotation is computed in order to extract a small number of factors. All words with a factor loading higher than a specific criterion are then retrieved as part of the extracted topic. While in hierarchical cluster analysis, a word may only appear in one cluster, topic modeling using factor analysis may result in a word being associated with more than one factor, a characteristic that more realistically represents the polysemous nature of some words as well as the multiplicity of context of word usages.” (“Manuals for Text Analysis Software” n.d.)
The data used for this study’s topic modeling was based on the co-occurrence of words in the same document and a limit of a maximum of 30 topics was set.
65 Computer generated analysis – negative vs positive word usage
Automated sentiment analysis is the application of text analytics techniques used for the identification of subjective opinions in text data. It generally involves the classification of text into categories such as “positive”, “negative” and, in some cases, “neutral”.
“The WordStat Sentiment Dictionary was actually designed by combining negative and positive words from the Harvard IV dictionary, the Regressive Imagery dictionary (Martindale,
2003) and the Linguistic and Word Count dictionary (Pennebaker, 2007). The WordStat dictionary building utility program was then used to expand its word list by automatically identifying potential synonyms and related words as well as any inflected forms. The dictionary consists of more than 9526 negative and 4669 positive word patterns. Actually, sentiment is not measured with those two lists of words and word patterns but instead with two sets of rules that attempt to take into account negations that may precede those words. For example, negative sentiment is measured by using the following two rules:
1. Negative words, not preceded by a negation (no, not never) within four words in the same sentence.
2. Positive words preceded by a negation within four words in the same sentence.”(“Sentiment Dictionaries for WordStat Content Analysis Software” n.d.)
Computer generated emotions triggered in the analysed sample
The Swedish version of The Regressive Imagery Dictionary (Martindale, 1975, 1990) is a content analysis coding scheme designed to measure primordial vs conceptual thinking. The rationale behind the dictionary is that psychological processes will be reflected in the content of a text.
66 For the present study, we used the ‘emotions’ category of the dictionary in order to discover what influence the news frames had on the reader’s affective response. We used a set of seven emotions (Table. X left-hand column) and in some words to exemplify them (Table 1:
WordStat Sentiment Dictionary-Categories of emotions right-hand column) as they were conceptualised by WordStat7. They were as follows:
Table 1: Wordstat Sentiment Dictionary -Categories of Emotions
Positive Affect Cheerful, enjoy, fun
Anxiety Afraid, fear, phobic
Sadness Depression, dissatisfied, lonely
Affection Affectionate, marriage, sweetheart
Aggression Angry, harsh, sarcasm
Expressive Behavior Art, dance, sing
Glory Admirable, hero, royal
Qualitative data gathering
After conducting the quantitative content analysis of articles about Romanian beggars in four Swedish newspapers, the researcher had learned something about which were the dominant elements of journalistic discourse, as concerned Romanian beggars. Due to this, the researcher was primed with what were the key concepts and topics to touch upon while interviewing the participants. Furthermore, the researcher was aware that their mission was to lead the discussion so that the relevant information was gathered (from the participants) regarding their perception of their representation in the media and how they made sense of it. Therefore, several predetermined questions were outlined, in the form of a semi-structured interview (See Appendix
3).
67 In-field interviews
The interviews were conducted over two days (18th and 19th of April 2019) in the city of
Malmö in the South of Sweden. Seven interviews were conducted, of which three were individual interviews and the rest were group interviews. We initially intended to gather data from ten individual interviews, but because of the circumstances on the street, a number four of the interviews had to be group interviews (three with two participants and one with three participants).
In order to identify Romanian beggars on the streets correctly, we required two main criteria to be fulfilled. The participants should:
1. speak and understand Romanian. The first question was a screening question, to identify whether they were Romanians or from Romania, and all interviews were conducted in Romanian.
2. be holding a mug or asking for money. At times this also included those who held odd jobs or sold items. Throughout the city there were other potential participants, probably Romanian, but they were collecting cans and did not ask for money.
The Interview Participants
We interviewed a total of eleven beggars (n= nine females and two males). Three of the female participants were alone, and the others were either with their spouses or fellow beggars.
Two were sitting in front of stores, three were sitting on streets, four were walking around the city, and two were in a park. In order to protect their identity, but still identify their responses, the participants were given aliases in the interviews transcripts.
68 Processing and Transcribing Data
The first step following the interviews was to transcribe them into separate files. The transcription of the interviews was intended to be as accurate as possible including slang, figures of speech or any other forms of speech. Because all the interviews were conducted in Romanian, the second step was to translate the interviews into English with the help of Google Translate.
Small edits, re-phrases or interventions were made to the translated text in order to render it as close as possible to the original answer. The interviews were translated as a matter of transparency and openness and for a more effective interpretation.
This chapter presented the research design and the methods employed for the data gathering process. It discussed the rationale behind the choices made in relation to the methodological literature and purpose of the study. Additionally, the procedures that were followed in the gathering processes were clearly outlined and discussed. Due to the use of ethnography and the study’s work with human subjects, some ethical concerns arose and are to be addressed in the following chapter.
69 6. Ethics
This chapter addresses the ethical considerations in relation to the research methods used and the role of the researcher during the ethnographic endeavour. Furthermore, some methodological reflections about the in-field interviewing, together with an explanation of the author’s personal motivations are also contained herein.
Ethical Considerations
During the ethnographic data gathering phase, for accuracy reasons and better processing of it, all the interviews were audio recorded. A voice recorder app for smartphones was used and the audio recordings were backed-up on the personal computer and personal mobile phone, where unauthorized persons do not have access. According to Swedish law and research ethical guidelines(“Good Research Practice,” n.d.), integrity-sensitive information on individuals and groups that may be revealed in studies, sometimes come in conflict with the requirements to public access, openness and transparency. Nevertheless, for the research herein, in order to protect the integrity of research subjects and informants, the following measures were taken:
1. Eliminating, deleting or covering information that is really specific and that could lead to the
identification of the subject of research. For instance, one participant had revealed
information about a really specific and unique public activity that benefited of public
attention and that could make her easily identifiable. In the transcripts, I chose to have that
information covered.
2. All the names, children’s names, hometowns, birthplaces were short-cut to one letter.
70 Another important ethical concern arisen for the research herein deals with the matter of professional secrecy and confidentiality of information disclosed by the participants. By professional secrecy means that professionals shouldn’t discuss health and personal situation with unauthorized individuals. Confidentiality on the other hand is more of an obligation not to communicate information given in confidence and entails protection against unauthorised persons partaking of the information. In order to observe professional secrecy and confidentiality, the following measures were taken:
• Despite the fact that some subjects disclosed really unique personal information about their
current life and experiences, due to the coding and interpretation of the interviews, it is very
much impossible to track them down. I have thus, de-identified them so neither the reader
nor any unauthorized person can re-establish any connection.
• Due to the fact that all the interviews were audio-recorded, I had tried before, during or after
the interview to be clear about my intentions to use the information only for academic and
research purposes. Because of the in-field circumstances, subject’s level of understanding,
researcher’s miscommunication or other reasons, I still have some concerns regarding their
actual understanding of what I was going to use the data for. Nonetheless, the only person
who has listened and has access to the audio recordings and codes so far is only me. The
audio recordings and codes are securely archived.
Personal Motivation
I am an ethnic Romanian living in Sweden. I moved to Sweden to attend university in
2012, at the same time as groups of Romanian beggars began to arrive and be more evident on
71 the streets of Sweden. I noticed how their number kept increasing; they could be spotted sleeping in parking lots, parks, in front of stores, central stations and main squares. Having been born and raised in Romania, I have already faced, and dealt with, more striking images of poverty as well as people living on the streets or begging. Generally speaking, for me this was not really something new. However, begging is illegal in my home country.
What was novel for me was to see how this minority group led to so much social debate and gained so much media exposure and visibility in Sweden. Sweden is a well-developed country that prides itself on its social welfare system, and where the concept of “begging” has another cultural meaning: to forbid begging means to forbidding poverty and this is not possible according to some voices.
Furthermore, I had the privilege of becoming a representative of the Romanian students in meetings and discussions on this issue, between the official authorities of the two governments, Swedish and Romanian.
Thus, these all contributed to the motivation for choosing my research subject.
Reflections on the In-field Interviews
The in-field work was a real challenge. The main obstacle that I encountered occurred in the process of collecting the relevant ethnographic data, required to answer the research questions for the study. Despite the fact that I had run the content analysis, before conducting the interviews and, thus, I had a pre-set of interview questions to follow, when I started approaching the first Romanian beggars I realized that I might encounter some difficulties in my endeavours.
It turned out that one of the main challenges was communicating with them on certain topics.
72 The major reason for this was the fact that I had to use a more basic type of language with some of them and had to try to avoid more complex concepts, in order for them to understand me.
Some of them proved to be illiterate, and sometimes they would give irrelevant answers to the original questions. In some instances, I felt that they weren’t really following what I was saying or that they were so focused and deep in their own thoughts that no matter the question, the answer would be the same.
Moreover, in order to obtain some information from them, I first had to build some sort of connection with them, in order to get them to ‘open-up’. Thus, a big part of the in-field interviewing meant discussing matters that had no relevance to the purpose of the study. In addition, because some of them were sitting and begging, I was somehow time-limited as I was disturbing and distracting them from focusing on their main occupation, to beg and make money.
What I had previously considered a strength – observing them in their environment – turned out to be a challenge for my research endeavours. It would have been interesting to have been able to conduct interviews with them in a more controlled environment, where no other external factors could influence or disturb them.
73 7. Presentation and Interpretation of the Results
This chapter presents the results and findings yielded by the research and analyses them with the help of the theoretical model developed for this purpose. The model consists of two dimensions: one addresses the dominant media discourse and the other the perceived effects of media visibility. A tentative research design was employed and the methods of content analysis of media frames (quantitative) and visual ethnography (qualitative) were used. The results of each method are presented first and interpreted thereafter, according to the developed theoretical model. Therefore, this chapter is structure into two sub-chapters: each one corresponding to the results of each method. The subchapters are also divided into: a presentation of results and then an interpretation of them –in the case of visual ethnography, the results are presented and interpreted concomitantly.
Results of the Content Analysis
We performed a quantitative research analysis gather some empirical data about the first dimension of the study (the dominant media discourse on beggars) and to answer the first research question of the study:
7. What is the dominant media discourse in Swedish Newspapers about beggars from Romania?”
Firstly, we used the second-level agenda setting and framing theoretical frameworks.
They were selected in order to provide a better understanding of what the dominant media discourse was. Second-level agenda setting complements the framing theoretical concepts by
74 further examining the elements of the frame; i.e. the moral evaluation, causal reasoning, appeals to principles and recommendation for the problem.
Secondly, we used Matthes and Kohring (2008) model of content analysis of the media frame as it was considered the most suitable given that we used a quantitative research method that positioned itself at the intersection of the two theoretical frameworks. This model was based on Entman’s (1993) operational definition, wherein several frame elements constitutes a frame: a problem definition, causal interpretation, a moral evaluation, and a treatment recommendation
(Matthes and Kohring 2008). We carried out a computer-generated extraction of the frequency of words of phrases, in order to identify the patterns of the frame and to analyse the frame elements.
The same computer program was used to extract and determine the tone of the voice and main emotional reactions that were triggered in the samples of text.
The results, presented below, show the main patterns of the frame concerning the issue of
Romanian beggars, analyses the elements of the frame and reveals the emotional reactions triggered and the tone of voice about Roma beggars in the four Swedish newspapers.
Presentation of the results of content analysis
The main statistical procedure we used, for topic extraction in WordStat, was factor analysis. Whereas a word may only appear in one cluster under hierarchical cluster analysis, topic modeling using factor analysis may result in a word’s being associated with more than one factor. This characteristic represents the polysemous nature of some words more realistically, as well as the multiplicity of contexts of word usage. Therefore, in order to determine the main patterns, a frequency of phrases was determined first.
75
Figure 7: Romanian beggars in Swedish Media WordGraph - Frequency of Phrases
Figure 7 shows the frequency of phrases extracted with WordGraph. The larger the size of the phrase, the more frequently it appeared throughout the sample of news articles selected from the four publications.
76 Table 2: Romanian beggars in Swedish media – frequency of phrases
Phrases Frequency
RUMÄNIEN OCH BULGARIEN Romania and Bulgaria 107
UTSATTA EU MEDBORGARE Vulnerable EU ci zens 67
FATTIGA EU MEDBORGARE Poor EU Ci zens 61
FÖRBUD MOT TIGGERI Ban for begging 61
TAK ÖVER HUVUDET A roof above the head 53
PENGAR TILL TIGGARE Money to beggars 47
HJÄLP TIGGARE I LUND Help the beggars in Lund 46
TYCKER ATT DET ÄR Think they are 41
JOAKIM MÅNSSON BENGTSSON 39
EU MIGRANTER I EU migrants in 37
HEMMA I RUMÄNIEN Home in Romania 35
TIGGARE I SVERIGE Beggars in Sweden 34
I ALLA FALL In any case 33
ÅSA REGNÉR S 31
CLAUDIA OCH NICO Claudia and Nico 30
SVERIGE FÖR ATT TIGGA To Sweden to beg 30
GATOR OCH TORG Streets and boulevard 27
Table 2 shows the 15 most popular phrases, extracted using WordGraph. The right-hand displays the number of times a phrase appeared throughout the sample of news articles selected from the four publications.
As can be observed from the WordGraph, the main phrases that dominate the graph are, in order: Romania and Bulgaria, followed by Vulnerable EU citizens, Poor EU Citizens, Ban for begging, a roof above the head, Money to beggars, Help the beggars in Lund etc. A total of 122
77 Swedish phrases were extracted (See Appendix 1 for the translations) and they appeared at least ten times throughout the total body of text of the news articles. The main phrases appeared more than 45 times throughout the same texts, with ‘Romania and Bulgaria’ topping the list with 107 appearances. Of course, one of the sampling criteria was to contain at least one of the words:
Romanian or Romanian. However, the world Bulgaria was not included anywhere in the search filters. It is notable that, although it was not included as a search term, it still emerged as part of the most used phrases.
A total of 29 main patterns of frames emerged from the analysis. Most of them are in
Swedish, since the articles were written and published in Swedish newspapers. However English translations are provided in the values table (Appendix 2).
78
Figure 8: Romanian beggars in Swedish Media. WordGraph – Frequency Patterns
Figure 8 shows the frequency of patterns extracted with WordGraph. The larger the size of the pattern, the more frequently it has appeared throughout the sample of news articles selected from the four publications
The dominant overarching patterns of frames that were computer generated are FÖR ATT
(In order to, because), HJÄLPA/TA HAND(Help/Take Care), SOM TIGGER(Who beg),
KOMMER TILL SVERIGE(Coming to Sweden), SAGER HON/HAN (Says she/he), UTSATTA
EU & MEDBORGARE (Vulnerable EU Citizen), HAR VARIT(Have been here), FÖR EU &
MIGRANTER(For EU Migrants), PÅ VÅRA & GATOR(On our streets), KAN GÖRA & MAN
(What can you do), FRÅN RUMÄNIEN & BULGARIEN (From Romania and Bulgaria), FÅ
IHOP PENGAR (To make money), RUMÄNSKA STATEN (Romanian State), GER PENGAR
(Give Money), FLER OCH FLER (More and more), I SVERIGE & STOCKHOLM (In Sweden and Stockholm), I SKOLAN & GÅ (To go to school), ATT VI & OSS (That we, our, )ETT
79 FÖRBUD & MOT TIGGERI(A ban for begging), STOCKHOLMS STAD(City of Stockholm),
ATT JAG & MIG (That I, mine), SKULLE KUNNA (Could do), SKA GÖRA & VET INTE
(What to do/Do not know), ETT BÄTTRE LIV (A better life), FÖRBJUDA TIGGERI (To ban begging), OTHER COUNTRIES (Other Countries), TRE MÅNADER (3 Months),
TILLSAMMANS MED (Together with).
The patterns were manually clustered by the researcher and conceptualised according to
Entman’s (1973) theoretical model and definition of frame, in order to fit the following frame elements: problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and treatment/ recommendation.
80 Table 3: Romanian beggars in Swedish media – content analysis clustering
Table 3 shows the main patterns that were extracted with the help of the computer software. They were clustered according to the four elements of frames (left-hand column). The patterns of the frames were analysed and the results are below, classified by frame element.
Problem definition. Since the problem definition consisted of an issue and relevant actors who discussed the problem – Romanian beggars – we can clearly identify this element frame since the main patterns that appear are “because/in order to” and “coming to Sweden”.
These are closely followed by “says she/he” (e.g., “They say they are coming to Sweden in order to make money and for a better life. There are more and more, they come together with...and stay usually 3 months. Some have been before…”).
81 Causal Interpretation. Because causal interpretation can be an attribution of failure or success regarding a specific outcome, we interpreted this frame element as the failure of EU,
Romania and Bulgaria to tackle the issue of this vulnerable group of citizens. All four patterns scored relatively highly on the frequency scale, with close values. This could explain why the
WordGraph for phrases (Figure 7) is dominated by the words: “Romania and Bulgaria” (e.g.,
Vulnerable EU Citizens and Migrants from Romania and Bulgaria, who are begging).
Moral evaluation. A moral evaluation can be positive, negative, or neutral. It is noticeable that the dominant patterns in our text are “on our streets” and “what can we do”. In this cluster, we also identified two sub-categories: “We, us, our streets, towns, country” and
“What can we do, should be done”. It can be concluded that the moral evaluation is slightly negative as something needs to be done (e.g., on our streets, in our cities, in our country. That we and us…).
Treatment recommendation. This category can include a call for or against a certain action. In our case it is noticeable that a predominant call for action is “To help/take care”. When we sum up the frequencies of “to ban begging” and “a ban against begging”, we see that this emerges as the second call to action about Romanian beggars. Third is the “Romanian State” which is probably required take more responsibility and “Giving Money”. Furthermore, “other countries” and “education/going to school” are the last two. The “other countries” pattern is a little ambiguous, but it probably suggests the idea of acting on this matter as other countries have done (e.g., to help and take care, to give money, to ban begging like in other countries or is the
Romanian state should take care. To educate the children and go to school).
82
Figure 9: Romanian beggars in Swedish media - dominant tone of voice
I Figure 10: Romanian beggars in Swedish media – emotional reactions
83 In Figure 9 we see that the dominant tone of voice of discourse is 65.4% negative and
34.6% positive. This graph is also relevant for the moral evaluation element of the frame, since the moral evaluation can be negative, positive or neutral.
Figure 10 shows the emotional reactions triggered by the dominant media discourse throughout the selected articles of the four Publications analysed. The main emotion triggered is
“aggression”, followed closely by “glory”. The third and forth are “affection” and “anxiety”, which share similar values. Last are “positive affect” and “sadness”. One interesting finding was that the frequency value for “aggression” dominated all the other emotions, being double that of
“glory” and almost equal in terms of frequency to the sum of all the other emotions.
Interpretation of the results of content analysis
Our theoretical model posits that media are bound to frame or structure their representations, since the very definition of a social issue, such as Romanian beggars, entails a frame (Brighenti 2010, Mateus, 2017). This media frame is necessary in order to make the
Romanian beggar issue more accessible to readers. The Swedish press creates and maintains the visibility of Romanian beggars through how the message is presented, and thus it shapes how this message reaches the readers, i.e. through the media frame Brighenti (2010). Therefore the media frame is a clear way of reassuring the reader that all they see is all they need to know.
Thus, the reality of Romanian beggars is less visible than the opinions about them. How the visible (the “message”) is presented (Brighenti, 2010) and how it reaches the viewers is presented below.
84 “Vulnerable EU Citizens and Migrants from Romania and Bulgaria who are begging say they come to Sweden in order to make money and for a better life. They come together with...and stay for three months. Some have been before. There are more and more on our streets, our streets, in our cities, in Sweden. What can we do? We don’t know: to help them and take care, to ban begging like in other countries, to give them money and educate them or is the Romanian state who should take responsibility?”
Moreover, and according to Brighenti (2010) a media frame does not merely concern simply opinions as cognitive positions, but also the elicitation of position taking (moral evaluation). The main emotional reaction that was triggered, in this study, was “aggression”, followed closely by “glory”. It was interesting that “aggression” was twice a frequently represented as “glory”, and almost greater than the sum of all the other emotions. Emotions and feelings are the most suitable way of understanding the persuasive nature of media discourse, and a re much more efficient in transferring the media’s agenda (Coleman and Wu, 2010).
Hence, our results suggest that by predominantly triggering an emotional reaction of aggression in their readers, towards the Romanian beggars’ issue, the media – for the most part – influences the readers to have a negative response towards this group.
Additionally, the results revealed that the tone of voice of the media discourse concerning
Romanian beggars was 65.4% negative and 34.6% positive. Tone of voice is important in media discourse because, as to Price, Tewksbury, and Powers (1997) suggest, framing can have evaluative effects and can directly influence what enters the minds of the audience, especially when the tone is more negative.
85 To sum, our results suggest that the media frame of the issue of Romanian beggars is
65.4% positive and 34.6% positive, and triggers a mostly aggressive emotional response from the reader.
Interview Results
The role of qualitative research analysis was to provide empirical data about the second dimension of the developed theoretical model and to address the other two research questions:
8. Are the beggars from Romania living in Sweden aware of their media representation by the Swedish Newspapers?
9. What are the perceived effects of visibility by the group of Romanian beggars and their current affairs?
This second dimension of the theoretical model examines the effects of media from the subject’s position, i.e. the Romanian beggars’, hence the perceived effects. The perceived effects of media are conceptualised as the Romanian beggars’ view of the media visibility effects: what they look like from their position and how they perceive them (Brighenti, 2017). If media visibility is a matter of not only showing something that is out there, but making something
‘showable’, then the Romanian beggars should also perceive something.
From he start, this second dimension of the model assumed that Romanian beggars were less likely to be able to read Swedish or English, hence their awareness of their media visibility and representation could possibly be limited. Nonetheless, because of their hyper visibility, they should perceive at least some effects.
Three types of effects, related to hypervisibility, were identified in the theoretical literature and categorised in our model, as follows: Negative effects: misrepresentation,
86 distortion of reality, disempowerment, inferiorization, moral anaesthesia and convivance;
Neutral effects: have repercussions in the legal and political domain; Positive effects: have the potential for truly caring for estranged people who are suffering.
Taking into account all these factors and the two research questions (R2 and R3), the presentation and interpretation of the results of the interview work is below, in the order of the research questions.
Presentation and interpretation of results regarding level of awareness among the group of Romanian beggars
Language Skills-a potential barrier to beggars’ becoming aware
As implied by the theoretical model, the interview results concerning Romanian beggars’ language skills revealed that none of the interviewed subjects were able to speak Swedish, although one or two of the respondents claimed that they knew some words in Swedish. Only one out of the eleven participants claimed to be able to speak fluent English and was able to express herself in this language. This claim was supported by her spouse who stated that her level of English was quite high.
A: “Hmm ...I also speak English very well …no doubt! I'm speaking really well…”
Some of them were not even able to read in Romanian, but they were still somehow aware of the importance of the language skills, since this might have had positive consequences on their lives, such as in finding a job. When they encountered language barriers in their daily struggles, they apparently found out ways to manage when required.
87 C; “...we do not know Swedish, English ... Romanian we can read ...there are some who understand and have been here longer, they understand ... they know better than most ....”
The results suggest that speaking the language, either Swedish or English, was an important factor for Romanian beggars, not only to directly access sources of information – in order to become aware of their media representation – but also in their daily struggles.
Low level of awareness
The majority of the others didn’t know anything about or had heard only a little about what was being written. The main theme they invoked was the potential ban on begging. Their reasoning for their low level of awareness was principally the fact that they couldn’t read at all, they have just got to Sweden or they were just sitting in front of a store.
A: About what? ...No, I do not know ... if we're not going anywhere ... I am just sitting here begging, I'm not going anywhere ... where? No, how should I know? If I just sit here begging ... where from? We do not go anywhere ... where?”
B: “I heard... they read these magazines ... “
A: “I do not know because I do not know how to read, my dear “
C: “No...for we do not know Swedish, English ... Romanian we can read”
Some participants – two or three persons – were aware of what was being written in the newspapers. Those who were aware seemed to have their own evaluation of what was being written and seemed to understand the role the media played in influencing their daily lives better.
88 A: “That they talk about us but we do not...there were a few years, through all the newspapers and everywhere and they thought...that’s it, they scared us ... but no, we scared them ...”
Furthermore, the beggars, who were more aware of the media, had been in Sweden for a longer period of time and were seen as ‘pioneers’, since some of the other respondents saw them as more knowledgeable and better informed. However, one respondent claimed that she asked around her social network, including the Swedish people she knew. Moreover, she seemed very interested in keeping up with the latest news. All of this could potentially qualify her as a
‘pioneer’ and consequently a “gatekeeper’.
Presentation and interpretation of results regarding the perceived effects
The quantitative research revealed some effects that were perceived by the Romanian beggars as positive, negative and neutral.
Perceived positive effects
The main positive effect of hypervisibility was the potential really to care about for estranged people who were suffering and to act accordingly. This also corresponded to one of the patterns of interaction identified by the content analysis; “To help/take care”. When it came to this aspect, the Romanian beggars seemed to perceive the way others treated them or helped them differently.
“Many people want to help, but they say they have no cash. They have cards and they say they can not ...! Clothes, I do not ask for them because I do not have anywhere to wear them.
89 Because I'm sleeping outside. Food I do get! Who wants to give, they give who doesn’t, they don’t... they are not obligated. Well, they're not obligated!”
“A: ... so .. if they want, they help us...if not, we go further ...what to do…”
Two respondents perceived a willingness to help as something that was dependent on each individual’s innate nature, yet one of them appeared to have, nonetheless, a more negative view about this matter.
A: “Bad, they do not give ... if I sit here, they go over that door ... if I move there, they get out over here ... neither way..... here they don’t give you anything, nor a bottle of water ... seldom they buy you a bottle of water ...they do not give food, they do not give you anything ... if you have money you buy yourself, if not, no”
Perceived negative effects
The results yielded by the ethnographic work and in-field interviewing were not clear enough to separate the negative effects’ dimension as it was conceptualized in the theoretical mode: misrepresentation, distortion of reality, disempowerment, inferiorization, moral anaesthesia and convivance.
Due to the data gathering process and the different answers offered by the participants, we were not able to draw a separation line between the above mentioned negative effects. In the results below, most of these effects overlap and intersect.
Judging from the answers of two participants in the study, some participants feel insecure or afraid. One of the respondents attributes her feelings of insecurity, engendered by their media visibility.
90 “B: We hide, we sleep where…I'm afraid to stay away for there are different kind of people... Especially now, I do not know if you have heard or read or I do not know if it was published ... because there are many interviews about women of ours aged over 50, who...are asked for sex like .... to go with them, something like that ... that’s what I’ve heard ... actually, from these women I heard and they told me that they already gave an interview”
Despite the fact that there is no clear evidence to verify any of these claims, these answers reveal a level of insecurity and fear, as well as inferiorization.
Furthermore, as figures of power and control, the police seemed to be perceived by some responds as sources of fear.
A: “...we hide from them ... what to do ... from the police, bad people….”
A:“...but I do not think that the police really care about us...as Roma, as a gypsy ... I have to say that because it is ... many cases that happened when we called the police and they do not …anything ....they enjoy it....they enjoy it, I swear...they are laughing, making fun….”
A: “it leaves us, they do not have anything with us ... not have anything with us if we do not do bad ... there are others who do very bad, steal, rob ... we, with begging, the police do not care... they do not have anything with us because they say ...just beggars, that’s how they call us…”
All of these comments suggest a level of disempowerment and convivance.
91 Misrepresentation and Distortion of Reality
The respondents, who seemed to be aware of the media representation and visibility of
Romanian beggars in the Swedish media, felt they were misrepresented. An analysis of their answers revealed that the media representation of Romanian beggars was perceived as stereotypical and enhanced prejudice towards them. One specific answer revealed that a particular participant was not only aware of the dominant media discourse but she could also draw inferences about the effects of media visibility:
A: “I thought you were recording me there ... I do not want to be on TV...For me it would be indifferent ... but I will be seen by the whole of Romania! Well, in a way it would be bad ...cause look what they say. They bring shame on our country... but they should be more interested ... to give work to the Roma.”
A: “... if they hear that we are Roma ... in Romania and we ask for jobs ... if one steals ... they say we are all in the same pot ... but it's not true! If one steals or fights, is aggressive ... it does not mean that all Roma are the same... that there are more types of Roma people ....But they do not calculate like that... to think that maybe others want to work for they have family, maybe others ... do not know ... but ... We really want to work! We are a different Roma family ... we are not like the others ... with long dresses, skirts ...We are Roma ... Romanianized …”
“A:... they think we are like dogs that do not know how to talk or even talk …But here, to have also papers, and a life and whatever you would have... they still look down on you as long as you're a Romanian ... you have to pretend to be what you are not ... or I do not know ... but we can not hide from ... of tradition, of our lives, of what we are ... just to make money
92 ... actually, let me tell you ... we are a puppet, better to say, to be easy to understand by any Romanian, a way to make money...for the Swedes and others, and others, and others ... and we probably, if we start doing politics ... and we, but we do not want to be in their mouth ... “
Neutral effects- Repercussions in the legal and political domains
It has been argued that repercussions in the legal and political domains are a neutral effect of media hypervisibility. The findings of this study’s quantitative content analysis revealed overarching patterns of “banning begging” and “a ban on begging”. Added together, these two patterns came second in the recommendation/treatment element of the media frame.
Despite the overall low level of awareness among the participants in the study, all of them seem to be – to some extent – aware of these two overarching frame patterns of ‘banning begging’. Moreover, most of the respondents had their own evaluations of these repercussions or considered them to be directly affecting their lives. Their overall perception was that a ban on begging was something negative for them.
A: “Well, I realise that... because Norway has installed the law, Denmark ... here closed by also... it won’t be long... what holds them? Nothing…nothing.”
B: “Ban on begging, but in order for us not to beg for, they should provide for us to eat.
...crazy stuff of theirs ... I think they wanna do something like that ...”
A: “...in Malmo, Sweden they did not put into practice... there isn’t something fixed. So, what, what do they think...that this will kick us out?... and if they ban the begging ... definitely, it will not be like it is now, you'll have a fear all the time , but people will pick up bottles, you'll see ... they will find something else…”
93 In the theoretical framework that was developed, the “perceived” effects of media are conceptualized as Romanian beggars’ view about the effects of media visibility – what they observe from their viewpoint and how they perceive the media effects of visibility (Brighenti,
2017). As Mateus (2017) states, if media visibility is a matter of not only showing something out there but of making something showable, then the Romanian beggars should perceived something. One of the main things that the media frame highlighted was the pattern of “ban on begging” and “a ban against begging”, which also corresponded to the neutral effects of media visibility on Romanian beggars. Although the findings of our visual ethnography do not give a clear picture, so far, of a relationship between media visibility and the Romanian beggars’ perceived negative or positive effects, in the case of perceived neutral effects, the results suggest that almost all of them are aware of the two patterns. It cannot be precisely concluded what this can high level of awareness can be attributed to, as concerns “banning begging” and “a ban on begging”, but our findings showed that Romanian beggars – no matter the level of their media awareness – revealed that they do perceive something out there and, more specifically, the legal repercussions of their hypervisibility.
94 8. Conclusion: Discussion, Limitations and Recommendations
The current study employed a theoretical framework that embraced idea of visibility in the form of spectacle. Spectacular visibility was considered to be more appropriate as it entailed the two other forms of visibility, as conceptualised by the literature: control and recognition.
Furthermore, as spectacular visibility is more of a characteristic of media and communication studies, it was, therefore, a valuable representative in this study (Mateus, 2010).
The model posited that the spectacle is a social relationship between people, mediated by images (the properties of the objects). In our case this is between Romanian beggars and readers of the Swedish press, as mediated by the Swedish Press. This mediation is done through images that are mere social representations that render Romanian beggars visible (Mateus, 2017).
The model proposed the idea that Romanian beggars are in the subject position in the field of media visibility. Here, the media discourse (the political and normative dimensions of visible or social representation) is the result of tensions between WHAT CAN and SHOULD/
NOT be seen and WHO and CAN/CANNOT see others. This spectacle entails that the viewer is able to observe other people closely. Thus, the media portrays life by selecting, cutting and editing social events in order to fit a certain format – similar to a theatre play (Brighenti, 2010), where the ‘actors’ are Romanian beggars, the ‘audience’ the readers and the Swedish Press the
“director”.
The study aimed to provide simple empirical data about the relationship between the a minority group’s (Romanian beggars) media visibility and their perceived effects of this. It is a
95 “what” and ‘how’ type of scientific inquiry rather than ‘why’. Because the aim is to explore the relationship, a bi-dimensional theoretical framework of visibility was developed, to facilitate the analysis of the aforementioned relation. Taking into account the aim of the research and the theoretical model employed, a tentative research design was used; as defined by Creswell (2014) a mixed methods approach was preferred since it was a bi-dimensional study. The mixed methods approach was also recommended for situations where the researcher is exploring new ground.
The study’s chosen quantitative method was the content analysis of media frames as proposed by Matthes and Kohring (2008). It showed us that the dominant media discourse about
Romanian beggars – in 500 articles that appeared in Swedish newspapers – is 65.4% negative and 34.6% positive, and triggered a mainly aggressive emotional response from the audience.
Feelings of anger, hardness and sarcasm were the predominant affective responses a reader experienced when reading about Romanian beggars in the Swedish newspapers. These findings are important because, according to Price, Tewksbury, and Powers (1997), framing can have extremely evaluative effects and can directly influence what enters the minds of audience members, especially when it contains a more negative tone. Same scholars also revealed that the more emotionally compelling the nature of the story, the more negative the effect it had on the readers’ ability to recall the information (Valkenburg, Semetko, and De Vreese 1999).
Because the brain processes the two components of affect differently (Coleman and Wu,
2010), it can be argued that, even though readers might feel angry about Roma beggars, they might also not recall the information properly and not in the same terms, since this is a cognitive method of evaluation.
96 Using Entman’s (1993) definition, we found the dominant media discourse concerning
Romanian beggars in Swedish newspapers was promoted in a definite manner as a problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and treatment or recommendation. The dominant media discourse was conceptualised in the theoretical model, as a social representation with two components: patterns of interaction (clustered in the four elements of frame) and frame of reference (‘media frame’), and our results suggest that the media frame of ‘the issue of
Romanian beggars was 65.4% positive and 34.6% positive, triggering a mostly aggressive emotional response from the reader.
The second dimension of the theoretical model looked at the effects of media visibility from the ‘subject’ position – that of the Romanian beggars, hence the perceived effects. These were conceptualized as the Romanian beggars’ views about their media visibility.
The findings of this ethnographic work revealed that the majority of Romanian beggars who took part in the study didn’t know anything, nor had they heard from others, about their media visibility. Their explanation for their low level of awareness was mainly the language barrier or the fact that they couldn’t read at all or. Nevertheless, they got information from fellow beggars who had been in Sweden for a longer period of time and who were seen as pioneers.
These pioneers, together with the Social Services Centre in Malmö (Stadsmissionen in Malmö) seemed to act as the gatekeepers of information, for the group (of Romanian beggars).
Furthermore, our results showed that three participants seemed to be highly aware of the media visibility that the group had. Not only that they were aware, but they could also argue and draw conclusions about the negative effects media visibility has on them. A possible explanation
97 for their level of awareness was the fact that they had been in Sweden for a longer time or at least spoke English.
Another important finding was the fact that despite the overall low level of awareness among the study’s participants, all of them seem to be aware of the overarching frame pattern of
“banning begging” that had been previously identified in the quantitative content analysis. A reason cannot be concluded precisely to which to attribute this high level of awareness when it comes to “banning begging”. Notwithstanding, they had formed strong opinions about this and perceive it to have a very negative consequence on their lives. Therefore, if they were also aware of the dominant media discourse in terms of introducing a ban in Sweden, it is possible that they might already have known what to expect. They already have, so-to-speak, a back-up plan and even strategies to counteract this measure, which is perceived as negative
The participants who were aware of the media discourse understood the effect media visibility and the dominant discourse had on them. They understood that the dominant media discourse had a negative tone, since it led to their experiencing negative feelings such as shame and fear, and knew that it affected their reputation and enhanced prejudice. These findings are important because news media’s representation contributes to stereotypical images of visible minorities and cultivate threat perceptions and prejudice (Andreasen, 2005). This matter of prejudice enhanced by media visibility could represent another important research area since prejudice is not only enhanced in the country of their residence, but also in their home countries where they are already subject to structural and various form of discrimination, but also EU programmes have tried to combat this problem.
98 The results didn’t point directly to a causal relationship between the dominant media discourse and their changing living conditions.
Discussion
Our research showed that the dominant media discourse concerning Romanian beggars in the analysed articles from Swedish newspapers was 65.4% negative and 34.6% positive, and triggering an mostly aggressive emotional response from the audience. One phrase sums up the dominant media discourse about the Romanian beggars:
“Vulnerable EU Citizens and migrants from Romania and Bulgaria, who are begging, say they come to Sweden to make money and for a better life. They come together with...and stay for three months. Some have been here before. There are more and more on our streets, in our cities, and in Sweden. What can we do? We don’t know: should we help them and take care of them or ban begging like in other countries; should we give them money and educate them or is it the
Romanian state that should take responsibility?”
A Flemish study by Meeusen and Jacobs (2017) showed that ethnic minorities tended to be predominantly covered from a negative angle in the media. This Flemish study focused on television news and not printed news. The same study revealed that the public definitely differentiated between various minority groups and that most favourable attitudes were towards the LGBT groups, whereas the most disliked were the Roma – only 7.8% of Roma news had a positive tone (Meeusen and Jacobs 2017). Our findings showed that of the analysed newspaper articles, only 34.6% had a positive tone of voice.
99 Limitations of the Study
This study is not without its limitations. The research focused on media discourse in newspaper articles and did not take into account the visual component of the media’s message. It is widely acknowledged that pictures and visuals are a strong tool for conveying the media’s message and that they influence readers. Nevertheless, this research did not examine the importance of images in the media’s representation of Romanian beggars. This opens the door for future research into this subject.
Additionally, it would be interesting for the media studies of minorities in Sweden to examine where Romanian beggars position themselves, in terms of visibility and media discourse compared to similar groups, as was done in the Flemish. Possible future research could tackle both Roma beggars and asylum-seekers, since Hansson and Mitchell (2018) strongly argue that poor migrants from Romania and Bulgaria are in the same situation as asylum-seekers.
Finally, the study overlooked another important component in the media visibility of
Romanian beggars in Sweden; that is the viewer. Research into the viewer and the public’s view could provide important knowledge about the media’s role in creating and maintaining the visibility of Romanian beggars.
Suggestions for Future Research
The participants who were aware of the media discourse understood the effect media visibility and the dominant discourse had on them in terms of enhanced prejudice. This matter of prejudice being enhanced by media visibility could represent an important research area for future study, since the prejudice was not only enhanced in the country of their residence but also
100 in their home countries, where they were already subject to structural and various other forms of discrimination.
Given the rationale that racial and sexual minorities, who are not granted recognition, become deprived (socially excluded), it is likely a similar thing would happen to Romanian beggars. In this example, we see that they have been granted a lot of recognition, but are still socially excluded. Future research should explore the thresholds and boundaries of visibility in order to determine what it exactly means to be super visible or invisible. The group of Romanian beggars are not necessarily aware of the power that media visibility could confer. By exploring the perceived effects of media visibility, empirical data could be gathered concerning their positioning within the thresholds of visibility or as to what type of visibility they are granted.
Furthermore, if they are positioned outside the thresholds of fair visibility, this would relate to the problem of managing one’s social image; thus research could ask how is their image managed? It is our belief that, in the case of Romanian beggars – as opposed to LGBT minorities or other racial or ethnical groups – because of their poverty and low levels of education, they are completely unaware of the importance of managing their visibility. For this reason, it would be interesting to study who are the actors or invisible structures that do manage their visibility.
Final Remarks
The migration wave of Roma beggars to Sweden has similar features to the previous waves of migration of poor Roma to other European countries. Roma have been viewed as an important concern for the Romania and Bulgarian diaspora and have frequently been portrayed as offenders or beggars, whereas the non-Roma migrants have considered themselves hard
101 workers (Nacu, 2011). Therefore, we postulate that, if Romanian beggars abroad became greater objects of public attention than they have ever been in their home countries, and if they gained a greater media visibility, this would serve to alleviate the prejudice and discrimination both in their country of residence and in their home countries. Especially since, according to the findings of our qualitative research, Romanian beggars still have strong ties with their families and home country.
Another important finding was the fact that despite the overall low level of awareness among the participants in the study, all of them seem to be more aware about the overarching frame pattern of “banning begging” that had been previously identified in the quantitative content analysis. A “ban on begging” it is a social issue that has sparked a lot of debate in the
Swedish society. It is not merely a social issue; rather it is a complex phenomenon that needs to be tackled in a transdisciplinary manner. The increased media visibility, The Valfridsson report and guidelines, the Eskilstuna governor allegations, EU’s anti-discrimination programmes, the legal actions and other measures taken previously in other European countries, may have diminished the phenomenon, but they have not really eradicated poverty among this minority group.
We cannot conclude definitively, based only on the findings of this study, what role the media plays in the level of awareness of Romanian beggars. However, somehow all of the participants in our study had learned of the “banning begging” topic, either from gatekeepers, through similar personal experiences in other countries or directly from media sources. Some of them hold strong opinions and perceive this to have a genuinely negative consequence on their lives. Unfortunately, it would not be the first nor last measure to impact them negatively.
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110 Appendix 1. Phrases
According to the User Manual of WordStat:
“FREQUENCY is number of occurrences of the word or category names.
% SHOWN Percentage, based on the total number of words displayed in the table
% PROCESSED Percentage, based on the total number of words encountered during the analysis.”
The data is represented visually, for a more accurate presentation of the results, but the numerical data is also provided. The content analysis was run over articles that were written in Swedish.
Frequency of Phrases
The phrase extraction feature of the software “identifies idioms and common phrases and will allow one to add them to a content analysis dictionary as well a perform co-occurrence analysis and comparison analysis of those phrases.”(WordStat7 2019)
The phrase finder feature of WordStat scans an entire text body and identifies the most frequent phrases and idioms, allowing one to add them easily to the currently active categorisation dictionary (WordStat7, 2019). In order to achieve that, the first step before the scanning process started was to set the minimum and maximum values of words that a phrase can have. In this case, the minimum value was to three and the maximum was eight.
111 Table 4: Frequency of phrases PHRASES FREQUENCY
RUMÄNIEN OCH BULGARIEN Romania and Bulgaria 107
UTSATTA EU MEDBORGARE Vulnerable EU ci zens 67
FATTIGA EU MEDBORGARE Poor EU Ci zens 61
FÖRBUD MOT TIGGERI Ban on begging 61
TAK ÖVER HUVUDET A roof above the head 53
PENGAR TILL TIGGARE Money to beggars 47
HJÄLP TIGGARE I LUND Help the beggars in Lund 46
TYCKER ATT DET ÄR Think they are 41
JOAKIM MÅNSSON BENGTSSON 39
EU MIGRANTER I EU migrants in 37
HEMMA I RUMÄNIEN Home in Romania 35
TIGGARE I SVERIGE Beggars in Sweden 34
I ALLA FALL In any case 33
ÅSA REGNÉR S 31
CLAUDIA OCH NICO Claudia and Nico 30
SVERIGE FÖR ATT TIGGA To Sweden to beg 30
GATOR OCH TORG Streets and boulevard 27
I SVERIGE ÄR In Sweden are 27
TIGGARNA I STOCKHOLM Beggars in Stockholm 27
BULGARIEN OCH RUMÄNIEN Bulgaria and Romania 26
TIGGARE FRÅN RUMÄNIEN Beggars from Romania 24
CARINA NILSSON S 23
FATTIGA EU MIGRANTER Poor EU Migrants 23
I SINA HEMLÄNDER In their homeland 23
RUNT OM I Around the 23
BYN MALU VINAT The village of Male Vinat 22
EU MEDBORGARE I EU ci zens in 22
I DAG ÄR Today are 22
112 PHRASES FREQUENCY
PENGAR TILL ORGANISATIONER Money to organisa ons 22
BARN ÄLDRE OCH JÄMSTÄLLDHETSMINISTER ÅSA REGNÉR Social Affairs Minister 21
I RUMÄNIEN OCH BULGARIEN Romania and Bulgaria 21
ROMER I RUMÄNIEN Roma people in Romania 21
TIGGARE I STOCKHOLM Beggars in Stockholm 21
I SÅ FALL in this case 20
ROMER FRÅN RUMÄNIEN Roma from Romanian 20
EU MIGRANTER I SVERIGE EU migrants in Sweden 19
GE PENGAR TILL TIGGARE Give money to beggars 19
HEM TILL RUMÄNIEN Home to Romania 19
MÄNNISKOR SOM TIGGER People that beg 19
CLAUDIA OCH NICO SBIRCEA 18
I SITT HEMLAND In their country land 18
I SVERIGE I In Sweden 18
BEFINNER SIG I Find themselves in 17
FATTIGDOM OCH DISKRIMINERING Poverty and discrimina on 17
I EN BIL In a car 17
I FÖRSTA HAND Firstly 17
LACATUS LUCA IOAN 17
SVERIGE OCH RUMÄNIEN Sweden and Romania 17
TIGGA I SVERIGE To beg in Sweden 17
PLATS I RUMÄNIEN A place in Romania 16
ÄR I SVERIGE Are in Sweden 16
Å ANDRA SIDAN On the other hand 16
EU MIGRANTERNA I EU migrants in 15
I RUMÄNIEN ÄR In Romania is 15
I SJÄLVA VERKET As a ma er of fact 15
LÄGGA PENGAR I To throw money in 15
113 PHRASES FREQUENCY
VISTAS I SVERIGE Stay in Sweden 15
ANNA KÖNIG JERLMYR 14
CIVILMINISTER ARDALAN SHEKARABI Civil Affairs Minister 14
I ANDRA LÄNDER In other Countries 14
I EU PARLAMENTET In the European Parliament 14
I STORT SETT I a bigger way 14
I TILL EXEMPEL For example 14
KRONOR I MÅNADEN Crowns a month 14
TIGGARE PÅ GATORNA The beggars on the streets 14
ÄR PÅ VÄG Are on the way 14
HITTILLS I ÅR So far this year 13
I CENTRALA STOCKHOLM In Stockholm Central 13
I DEN SVENSKA In the Swedish 13
I EU VALET EU Elec ons 13
I TRE MÅNADER for 3 months 13
MONA LISA PRUTEANU 13
RUMÄNIEN ELLER BULGARIEN Romania or Bulgaria 13
RUMÄNSKA OCH BULGARISKA Romanian or Bulgarian 13
STATSMINISTER STEFAN LÖFVEN Prime Minister 13
TIGGERIET I STOCKHOLM Begging in Stockholm 13
ÄR EN FRÅGA It is a ques on 13
BE OM PENGAR to ask for money 12
BER OM PENGAR asking for money 12
EU MIGRANTERNAS SITUATION EU migrants situa on 12
FÖRENINGEN HJÄLP TIGGARE I LUND Organisa on for helping beggars in Lund 12
HEMLÖSA EU MIGRANTER Homeless EU migrants 12
I TIGGARNAS HEMLÄNDER I beggars’ home countries 12
I VÅRT LAND In our Land 12
114 PHRASES FREQUENCY
JOSEFINE HÖKERBERG OCH ROGER TURESSON 12
ORGANISATIONER SOM ARBETAR Organisa ons that work with 12
SOVA PÅ GATAN Sleep on the streets 12
TILLBAKA TILL RUMÄNIEN Back to Romania 12
VERONICA WOLGAST KARLBERG 12
BARN ÄLDRE OCH JÄMSTÄLLDHETSMINISTER ÅSA REGNÉR S 11
EBBA BUSCH THOR 11
I EN HUSVAGN In a caravan 11
I FÖRRA VECKAN Last week 11
I STOCKHOLMS STAD In the city of Stockholm 11
PENGAR TILL MAT Money for food 11
PROCENT AV BEFOLKNINGEN Percent of the popula on 11
RÄTTIGHETER OCH SKYLDIGHETER Rights and responsibili es 11
S FRIA RÖRLIGHET Free movement 11
SKÄNKA PENGAR TILL ORGANISATIONER Give Money to organisa ons 11
TA SITT ANSVAR Take their responsibility 11
TIGGER I STOCKHOLM beg in Stockholm 11
TILLRÄCKLIGT MED PENGAR sufficient with money 11
TYCKER DET ÄR think that 11
ÄGNAR SIG ÅT Own themselves to 11
EU MINISTER BIRGITTA EU minister Birgi a 10
FÖRST OCH FRÄMST firstly and foremost 10
HITTA ETT JOBB find a job 10
I ANDRA EU LÄNDER in other EU countries 10
I EN NY in a new 10
I SOCIALA MEDIER in the social media 10
JOBB I RUMÄNIEN Job in Romania 10
JUST NU ÄR right now 10
115 PHRASES FREQUENCY
JUSTITIEMINISTER BEATRICE ASK Jus ce Minister 10
KOMMUNER OCH LANDSTING Local authori es 10
MORGAN JOHANSSON S 10
OSLO OCH KÖPENHAMN Oslo and Copenhagen 10
ROMERNAS SITUATION I Roma’s situa on 10
RUMÄNER OCH BULGARER Romanians and Bulgarians 10
TIGGERI INTE ÄR begging is not 10
UNDER DE SENASTE over the last 10
116 Appendix 2. Topics
Table 5: Frequency of topics Pa ern Frames Frequency % Shown
FÖR ATT/In order to. because 2894 7.85%
HJÄLPA/TA HAND Help/Take Care 2280 6.19%
SOM TIGGER Who beg 2276 6.17%
KOMMER TILL SVERIGE Coming to Sweden 2155 5.85%
SAGER HON/HAN Says she/he 2128 5.77%
UTSATTA EU & MEDBORGARE Vulnerable EU Ci zen 2126 5.77%
HAR VARIT Have been here 2017 5.47%
FÖR EU & MIGRANTER For EU Migrants 1924 5.22%
PÅ VÅRA & GATOR On our streets 1870 5.07%
KAN GÖRA & MAN What can you do 1623 4.40%
FRÅN RUMÄNIEN & BULGARIEN From Romania and Bulgaria 1469 3.99%
FÅ IHOP PENGAR To make money 1263 3.43%
RUMÄNSKA STATEN Romanian State 1177 3.19%
GER PENGAR Give Money 1120 3.04%
FLER OCH FLER More and more 1114 3.02%
I SVERIGE & STOCKHOLM In Sweden and Stockholm 1093 2.97%
I SKOLAN & GÅ To go to school 1079 2.93%
ATT VI & OSS That we. our 990 2.69%
ETT FÖRBUD & MOT TIGGERI A ban for begging 978 2.65%
STOCKHOLMS STAD City of Stockholm 971 2.63%
ATT JAG & MIG That I. mine 870 2.36%
SKULLE KUNNA Could do 752 2.04%
SKA GÖRA & VET INTE What to do/Do not know 675 1.83%
ETT BÄTTRE LIV A be er life 551 1.49%
FÖRBJUDA TIGGERI To ban begging 517 1.40%
OTHER COUNTRIES Other Countries 495 1.34%
117 Table 5: Frequency of topics Pa ern Frames Frequency % Shown
TRE MÅNADER 3 Months 346 0.94%
TILLSAMMANS MED Together with 106 0.29%
118 Appendix 3. Semi-structured Interview Questions
● Are you Romanian or from Romania?
● When/why/how did you come to Sweden?
● What are the living conditions?
● Do you have children?
● Are you aware of what the newspapers are writing about Romanian beggars?
● What do you know about what is being written?
● How does this affect you?
● How do you have access to information?
● Is life better for you here?
119