Public perception of A8 migrants: the discourse of the media and its impacts An Outline Review by BEMIS Jan Semotam The Black & Ethnic Minority Infrastructure in Scotland Tel. 0141 548 8047 38 Queen Street Fax. 0141 548 8284 Centrum Offices www.bemis.org.uk Glasgow [email protected] G1 3DX Contents 1. Background to Review 2 1.1 Introduction 2 1.2 Past Research Limitations 3 1.3 Evidence Reviewed 3 2. Key Findings 4 2.1 Media Impact 4 2.2 Ethnic Coverage 5 2.3 Newspaper Analysis 5 2.4 Interviews and Focus Groups 8 3. Future Research Recommendations 10 3.1 Coverage Comparison 10 3.2 Expansion of Interviewed Sample 10 3.3 Media Variety 10 3.4 Two Sides 10 4. Conclusions and Way Forward 11 4.1 Perceptions of Central and East Europe 11 4.2 Press Coverage Balance 11 4.3 Way Forward 11 6. Bibliography 13 7. Appendices 15 7.1 Interview and Focus Groups Participants 15 7.2 Keywords used in the Newsbank and Metro searches 16 7.3 Questions for Focus Groups and Interviews 17 - 1 - 1. Background to Review This document provides an Outline Review of the research1 entitled “Public perception of A8 migrants: the discourse of the media and its impacts” created as part of the arrangement between BEMIS (Empowering Scotland’s Ethnic and Cultural Minority Communities) and the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network’s (GRAMNet). The aim of this review is to highlight the main findings of the dissertation and to translate them into material appropriate for the needs of the third sector. It is part of a wider process of creation of a sector-wide forum addressing issues related to the ways migrants are portrayed in the media and how these impact on public perceptions of them. Full text of the original study can be downloaded from the BEMIS website: http://bemis.org.uk/publications.html 1.1 Introduction On 01 May 2004, eight countries from the former ‘Eastern Bloc’ joined the European Union (EU) in what was the single largest enlargement of the union in its history. These countries – Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - have been grouped together into the ‘Accession Eight’ or ‘A8’. It has been estimated that at least half a million A8 nationals have come to the UK since 2004 making it one of the most important social phenomena in recent years. On 30 April 2011, all transitional limitations on the A8 countries (but not the A2 – Bulgaria and Romania – that joined in 2007) were lifted throughout those old Member States that had opted for them, marking an important step for A8 nationals wishing to exercise their right to travel, work, study, and live anywhere within the EU area. The enlargement and the consequent migration have received extensive mass media coverage throughout the world. Mass media in the old Member States, and especially in the UK, have been focusing on the numbers of people arriving from the A8 countries and the potential impact this movement might have on the host society. Coverage has been ranging from welcoming the migrants as a needed workforce to fearing the ‘floods’ of cheap labour taking jobs away from the host population and infesting it with criminality. The substantial scale and variety of the media coverage that these issues have received raises an important question: “To what extent do the media influence their audiences and, consequently, how these audiences then perceive and interact with the newly arrived A8 migrant community?” This paper therefore, looked at how much influence do the media (in this case, the press) in Scotland have on their audiences when it comes to the portrayal of the A8 migrant community in the country. By doing so, it aimed to identify the connection between processes of public perception and social inclusion. 1 The original dissertation was written by Jan Semotam who is also the author of this review. - 2 - 1.2 Past Research Limitations Despite the large economic and societal change that this vast movement of people has brought, relatively little academic research has been done with regards to some of the issues linked to the phenomenon. Several studies have been carried out looking at some of the economic and social impacts of the migration on both the Scottish host population and the newly arrived A8 migrants.2 It has also been analysed how the media portray minorities and migrants in their coverage or how the A8 minority individuals find their new lives in the UK and in Scotland in particular. However, it seems that no comprehensive research has been done on linking the changes coming out of the seven-year period since the eight Central and East European (CEE) countries joined the European Union and the perceptions of these changes and of the people who came to the UK by the resident Scottish population. The viewpoint of the local population has so far not been academically addressed. 1.3 Evidence Reviewed Research for this project was carried out in three different stages - library based analysis of academic discourses regarding the media’s impact on social inclusion and integration, library based content analysis of newspapers and a case-study involving focus groups and interviews. A variety of media-related literature was analysed; themes included the role that mass media play in the society, who or what influences their everyday operations and the effects they can have on their audiences. These were then worked into theoretical considerations that could pose relevant questions for the empirical research stages. Content analysis was done using the Newsbank online database of the following newspapers: Scottish tabloid - Daily Record, Scottish edition of a free newspaper - Metro, Scottish broadsheet– The Herald, national broadsheet– the Guardian and Scottish edition of a national tabloid - the Scottish Sun. These newspapers were chosen because they represent the largest circulation numbers by newspaper type in Scotland. Discussion-based focus groups and individual interviews were chosen as the best available source of relevant data for this project as interviews offer the chance to effectively ask questions that are open-ended or too complex for other methods, such as questionnaires. Seven participants were interviewed in two focus groups (2 and 5) and seventeen individually. Long-term residency of at least 10 years in Scotland was the only choosing criterion that had to be met by all participants. Focus groups centred on the participants’ general awareness of the A8 countries and nationals, preferences of newspapers, reasons behind their choices and the ways the newspapers influence their perception of A8 migrants in Scotland. 2 Canton et al. (2008), De Lima et al. (2007), Equal Opportunities Committee (2010), Glasgow City Council (2007), Jack (2007), KnowFife Findings (2007) or Pollard et al. (2008) - 3 - 2. Key Findings 2.1 Media Impact Looking at the role that the media play in the society, it is particularly important to realise that they facilitate communication between the sender of a message and the receiver of that message. Using the media is a two-sided process and it is significant not only how we send a media message but also how we receive that message. Mass media have become omnipresent in our everyday lives; it is nearly impossible to imagine our day without newspapers, television, radio or the Internet and very difficult to overestimate the important roles these play in our contemporary society. It is the mass media that most often act as a bridge between people’s private lives and their relation to the public world; it is through the mass media that we learn about our place in the society. They are both a force for integration and for dispersion and individuation of society. Media messages matter. They are not somehow separate from our ‘real’ lives; picked up for fun and discarded when we turn to the important things. On the contrary, media messages are central to our everyday lives. Media influence our understanding of the world around us because media content can spread basic messages about the nature of reality. For many people, perhaps even the majority, mass media provide the best – and only – easily accessible approximation of ever- changing political, economic and social realities. By providing only partial information about personalities, issues, or events, the media can, to an extent, control what their audiences know about them and how they think about them. The only way to influence what people think is precisely to shape what they think about. The ‘active audience’ theory sees the media as merely a tool or a resource which people can use to help them make sense of current events. Audiences are active because they can interpret and process media messages in their own way; they do not simply receive a media text but instead develop independent interpretations of what that text means. These interpretations can be influence by a number of social factors, including friends, family, colleagues, class, and education; people constantly draw upon collective resources and experiences to create an individual understanding of media messages. No man is an island, and readers, viewers and listeners do not form and maintain the ways they use information completely on their own. There are many external influences that guide us in our perception of the media and that manipulate how we use them and what we use out of them. The same media message can have very different meanings to different people. The media therefore, have to focus on how they distribute their messages so that the audience would interpret them in the most desired way. The only way to influence what people think is precisely to shape what they think about.