362.5
From Lesbos to Budapest and Beyond
the Construction of the Refugee Problem in the Greek and Hungarian Dailies.
Session: The Mediterranean Refugee Desasater and the EU
Zoltán Előd, Nikos Fokas
From Lesbos to Budapest and Beyond
The construction of the refugee problem in the Greek and Hungarian dailies.
The present study intends to test empirically how the mass media contribute to the construction of the refugee crises. Our analysis is based on the theory of complexity reduction and reality construction as developed by Niklas Luhmann. As a result of this reduction and construction process mass media construct a reality that is a reduced image of the world.
In order to investigate empirically this theoretical approach we collated all the articles in the online editions of Greek and Hungarian dailies – both EU member states significantly affected by the refugee problem – that related to the refugee crises. Based on the analysis of these articles we try to explore the interpretation framework of crises as well as how mass media present these crises as a humanitarian problem, as invasion problems, or cultural and religious opposition problems.
The networks of concept have been drawn up on the basis of the appearances of words related to the crises in the articles. Thus the nodes of networks represent words appeared simultaneously in a given article. In this way we try to empirically reconstruct the conceptual network of refugee crises shaped by the mass media.