Mass media and immigration. Framing, social construction of reality and social problem

Population, Migrations and Development : Beyond Borders

Representing (and marking) the borders. Italian media and migrations Marco Binotto and Marco Bruno - Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Communication and Social Research

Internal borders:

migration and the securitarian issue

External borders:

“Lampedusa” as Emergency Frame on

migration in Italian media

A blown up snapshot is a photographic caricature, an

exaggeration, a change in the shapes and dimensions of a

representation to highlight it and to emphasize an aspect of it.

That is what happens to the image of immigration. To begin

with, for the most part, it deals with a picture, a shot that’s

been fixed for thirty years now of a phenomenon that has

been in perpetual motion. The media seems to content itself

with this static and apparently unchanging image. It has

chosen a detail, an aspect to magnify and exaggerate. That

is the dark side that is present in every human phenomenon

– it is problematic and related to the language of crime, to

emotions of pain, to fears of invasion and of degradation.

The “blown up” snap shot in question is that of immigration

and of foreign presence in Italy, and it focuses on

emergency, safety and a naturally problematic vision of the

phenomenon. This very briefly summarizes some of the

more important evidence that came out of the surveys that is

presented here on the representative mechanisms of the

migratory phenomenon in the Italian mass-media, especially

information media.

Only 26 stories without crime or security issues

2008 Tv stories on immigration issue (not linked to crime report or security issues) on total stories (six months)

Only crime news: 25 years of media coverage of migrations

RESEARCH EXTRACOMUNITARI (MARLETTI 1991)

FUORILUOGO (BINOTTO, MARTINO 2004)

MEDIA E IMMIGRAZIONE TRA STEREOTIPI E PREGIUDIZI

(CALVANESE 2011)

OSSERVATORIO CARTA DI ROMA AGENDA

NOTIZIE FUORI DAL GHETTO

(AA.VV. 2013)

TIME 1982-1990 12/2002- 3/2003 2005 – 2008 2010 2012

SECTION % ISSUE % ISSUE % FIRST PAGE ISSUES % FIRST PAGE ISSUES %

RESULTS

CRIME NEWS 37 CRIME NEWS AND TERRORISM 40,4 TRIALS 58,8 NEWS REPORTS (DESCRIPTION, JUDICIAL OR INVESTIGATION STORIES, SCENARIO…)

52,4 BLACK NEWS 38,9

FIRST PAGE 5 ARRIVALS AND DISEMBARKMENTS 16,0 ARRIVALS, DISEMBARKMENTS, SEA DISASTERS, PUSHBACKS

1,4 MIGRATION FLOODS 20,2

INTERIORS 20 POLITICAL OR THEME DEBATE 19,6 ADMNISTRATIVE 21,5 TRATTAMENTO TEMATICO (IMMIGRATION / SECURITY)

13,0 LEGISLATION 19,3

ABROAD 22 ECONOMICS, OCCUPATION AND EALTH 11,2 WELFARE 19,7 DESCRIPTION, ENQUIRY, NARRATION OR STORY, CULTURE

6,1 SOCIETY 22,4

THIRD 5 CULTURE, RELIGION AND INTEGRATION 9,2 CULTURE 13,6

SHOWS 4 OTHER 3,6 RACISM 12,5

SPORTS 4

SPECIAL ISSUES 3

With crime news stories, the theme of landings on the Italian coast - and more generally of the dimension of

immigrants’ entries - is one of the most characteristic elements of the entire media representation of the

phenomenon of migration. As previously emphasized (Bruno 2004, p. 95), the landing often becomes an iconic

media image of the phenomenon of migration. The representation of migration given by the Italian media is strictly

visual and the vocabulary used has a symbolic value both in lexical and textual terms.

Landings as a “media-icon” of immigration

FRAMING DEVICES FRAME OF ALARM FRAME OF PIETISM (MINORITY)

DEPICTION / LABELS CLANDESTINES.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.

DESPERATE.

MIGRANTS.

ROLE OF SUBJECTS ACTIVE. PASSIVE. VICTIMS.

METAPHORS AND CATCHPHRASES HUMAN TSUNAMI. MAXI LANDING. WAVE

OF MIGRATION. MEDITERRANEAN CEMETERY

EXEMPLARS “LAST YEAR’S LANDINGS AND CHAOS”. ITALIAN EMIGRATION IN THE PAST.

PREVIOUS INCIDENTS AT SEA.

VISUAL IMAGES YOUNG MEN. LAW ENFORCEMENT

OFFICERS, MILITARY FORCES.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN. RESCUERS.

BOATS.

DEFINITION OF THE ISSUE INVASION. UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION.

EMERGENCY LANDINGS.

HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY.

FLIGHT OF REFUGEES FROM WAR

AND MISERY.

ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY LAXITY AND FEW CONTROLS. LACK OF

ACTION FROM EUROPE.

WESTERN COUNTRIES. MIGRANT

SMUGGLERS.

The attempts to summarise the two frames

identified by the iconic and discursive

representative elements that constitute

and support them. It is important to

emphasize that, even if presented next to

each other, the two frames, unlike other

similar empirical acquisitions (i.e. Van

Gorp 2005), do not have the same weight

and the same representative power.

Arrivals from nowhere:

the coverage of Italians media

are focused on domestic events

There is no immigration without crime. The news reports - especially crime and

judicial news - overcome the account of migrations and foreign presence. Our

research aims to verify whether this representation is due either to the

newsworthy facts or to foreign persons’ behaviour, or it can be attributed to the

newsrooms’ selection. The results, obtained comparing this picture with the rest

of the crime news in the newspapers analysed, show a difference of treatment

both in the amount and visibility of the news and in the kind of facts or details

published. The news media confirm to be a faithless "mirror" of social

phenomena.

Black mirror:Different pages for different people

An ethical-professional matter in journalism

The stories on migrants constantly appear to be on the fence between the obligation of the

news and respect for privacy. A tendency to diffuse information and images prejudicial to

the dignity of persons involved is witnessed, directly or indirectly in news items especially

when the main characters are migrants. The behaviour of the two sources of media

analyzed do not appear homogenous: news programs on Tv more often represent the

images of migrants involved in news items, while newspapers give space to information on

victims and family relations without avoiding the consideration of minors.

PRESENCE OF IMAGES OR INFOR-

MATIONS TV NEWS

TV NEWS STORY WITH FOREIGN-

ER PERSONS AS PROTAGONIST PRESS

PRESS STORY WITH FOREIGNER PER-

SONS AS PROTAGONIST

Yes, adult

29,7% 39,9% 34,7% 35,5%

Sì, minor

2% - 0,8% 1,3%

No

68,3% 60,1% 64,5% 63,2%

Total

100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%

AA.VV., Associazione Carta di Roma. Notizie fuori dal ghetto. Primo Rapporto annuale. Roma: Ponte Sisto, 2013. // Marinella, Belluati. Lampedusa 3 ottobre 2013. Cronaca di una tragedia. In AA.VV., Associazione Carta di Roma. Notizie alla deriva. Secondo Rapporto annuale, 63-78. Roma: Ponte Sisto, 2014. // Berger, Peter L., Luckmann, Thomas. The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1966. // Binotto, Marco. “Invaders, Aliens and Criminals. Metaphors and Spaces in the Media Definition of Migration and Security Policies”.

In, Destination Italy: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative, edited by Emma Bond, Guido Bonsaver, Federico Faloppa. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015. // Binotto, Marco. “Tracciare confini. Metafore, frame e spazi nella definizione del nemico”. In: Tracciare confini. L’immigrazione e i media italiani, edited by Marco Binotto, Marco Bruno, and Valeria Lai. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2015 - in press. // Binotto, Marco, and Martino, Valentina, eds. Fuoriluogo. L’immigrazione e i media italiani. Cosenza: Rai-Pellegrini, 2004. //

Binotto, Marco, Bruno, Marco, and Lai, Valeria, eds. Gigantografie in nero. Ricerca su sicurezza, immigrazione e asilo nei media italiani. Raleigh NC: Lulu Press, 2012.. // Binotto, Marco, Bruno, Marco, and Lai, Valeria, eds. Tracciare confini. L’immigrazione e i media italiani. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2015 - in press. // Bruno, Marco. “L’ennesimo sbarco di clandestini”. In: Fuoriluogo. L’immigrazione e i media italiani, edited by Marco Binotto, and Valentina Martino, 95-107. Cosenza: Rai-Pellegrini, 2004. // Bruno, Marco. Cornici di realtà. Il frame nell’analisi

dell’informazione. Milano: Guerini e Associati, 2014. // Calvanese, Ernesto. Media e immigrazione tra stereotipi e pregiudizi. La rappresentazione dello straniero nel racconto giornalistico. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2011. // Cohen, Stanley, and Young Jock, eds. The manufacture of news. Social problems, deviance and the mass media (Revised edition). London: Constable-Sage, 1981. // Entman, Robert M. “Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm”, Journal of Communication 43, 4 (1993): 51-58. // Gamson, William A. Talking politics. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1992. // Marletti, Carlo (eds). Extracomunitari. Dall’immaginario collettivo al vissuto quotidiano del razzismo. Torino: Eri Rai-Vqpt, , 1991. // Van Gorp, Baldwin, “Where is the frame? Victims and intruders in the belgian press coverage of the asylum issue”, European Journal of Communication 20, 4 (2005): 484-507.

References

The identification and deconstruction of prevalent frames in news representations allows to highlight the central role of the media in the definition of the situation and

in the construction of the immigration in Italy as “social problem”. The news-frame analysis approach (Entman 1993; Bruno 2014) allows to point out how visual

images, lexical and argumentative constructs, metaphors, etc. are “framing devices” (Gamson 1992) that contribute to establish, structure and enhance the

discourse on the Other, not only as a set of messages, but as a dynamic and potentially conflictual (sometimes consensual) field of representations and forces that

push to a specific definition and construction of reality Berger, Luckmann 1966).

A dark blown up snapshot

Arrestati due marocchini e un tunisino

Dai campi di Latina a venditori di morte

La Stampa, 19 settembre 1992 (Cronaca di Torino)

Fermeremo i clandestini

basta con gli allarmi inutili

La Repubblica, Livia Turco, 12 agosto 1998

Tragedia nel canale di Sicilia. Si contano

i cadaveri.

Recuperati i corpi di 14clandestini, e si cerca

La Stampa, 18 luglio 2007

Arrestati tre albanesi.

Rumeno dietro le sbarre per una rapina a Rimini.

La Repubblica, 14 gennaio 2003, Il Tempo, 19 gennaio

Cocaina sequestrata per un valore complessivo di

oltre trentamila euro e due marocchini arrestati.

22 ottobre 2011 (Cronaca di Savona)

Libero, 2008 April 20, cover

Theme of news reports (year 2008, %, sum 780 press news, 276 tv news).

Use of nationality label in headlines

Geographical area of Newspapers’ main title (year 2010)

The Invasion Frame vs The Pietistic Frame

Since 2002, at Department of Communication and So-

cial Research – Sapienza University of Rome (CoRiS)

a team of researcher and scholar is involved on study

of representations of diversity and immigration on

mass media. In a network of ten Italian Universities the

Coris Research Unit on Media and Immigration

participated, since 2007, to the Observatory activities

of “Carta di Roma” (“Journalist’s code of conduct

regarding asylum seekers, refugees, victims of

trafficking and migrants”: www.cartadiroma.org).

Among main publications by the Coris Research Unit

on Media and Immigration:

Binotto Marco, and Martino

Valentina, eds. Fuoriluogo.

L’immigrazione e i media

italiani.

Cosenza: RaiPellegrini,2004.

Binotto Marco, Bruno Marco,

and Lai Valeria.

eds. Gigantografie in nero.

Ricerca su sicurezza, immi-

grazione e asilo nei media

italiani. Raleigh NC: Lulu

Press, 2012.

“Fuori dall’emergenza.

Immagini delle migrazioni

nel racconto dei media“,

ComunicazionePuntoDoc”

no. 9 – feb, 2014.

News or images that might identify persons guilty or suspect in violence crimes

Theme of news reports (year 2008, %, sum 780 press news, 276 tv news).

Themes of news reports in different surveys on Italian newspapers.

Italy87%

World13%