Navya Davuluri
Dehumanization involves denying individuals or groups their human nature and stripping it away. This process includes portraying others in ways that undermine their humanity, dignity, and worth. A crucial aspect of dehumanization is perceiving others as less capable of experiencing complex emotions typically distinguishing humans from animals, such as tenderness, guilt, and compassion. Often, individuals form attitudes and beliefs about others and social groups based on direct experiences or contact. However, geographical and social boundaries frequently limit this direct contact, making other sources of information, like the media, extremely important in shaping attitudes and beliefs about other people. The press significantly influences our understanding of migration and refugees through framing, stereotyping, and visuals.
Framing in media involves strategically presenting information in such a way that it subtly guides people to think in a specific manner. This technique is implemented through selective presentation of information, the use of particular language structures, and linguistic tools like metaphors. The way humans are depicted in images also plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions and emotions about them. Media framing helps narrate an issue and directs how to interpret it, significantly influencing public attitudes and behaviors. For instance, the arrival of four Chinese refugee boats in Canada in 1999 was portrayed in a manner that created an impression of a crisis in the immigration and refugee system. This media portrayal contributed to shaping a perception of refugees as a threat and burden rather than as individuals with unique stories and struggles.
Media priming is another influential factor in shaping public opinion about refugees. According to this concept, knowledge and attitudes are organized in a network of interconnected mental concepts. When one concept is emphasized or stimulated, related concepts also become activated. In the context of media priming, as explained by Arendt in 2013, the media serves as a stimulus influencing these mental connections. For example, repeatedly presenting the concepts ‘refugee’ and ‘bogus’ together in media coverage can strengthen and increase the accessibility of the association between these two concepts in people’s minds. This repeated pairing then becomes more prominent in our thoughts and influences perceptions of refugees, possibly leading to beliefs that refugees are not genuinely in need of help or are untrustworthy.
How the refugees are portrayed in media, the imageries used, and the linguistic tools also shape our perceptions of the refugees or migration. For example, in the aspect of visual framing of refugees, when depicted in large or cohesive groups in the media, it reduced the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to the depicted refugees, leading to dehumanization. The fact that exposure to large groups may increase the dehumanization of refugees aligns with the view that current visual representations of refugees emphasize a sense of threat rather than a humanitarian debate, as refugees are visually represented “as being a crisis” for host nations. However, on the contrary, when the imagery was related to small groups of people or a single person with a face and identifiable, it increased the aspect of prosociality and invoked empathy in people rather than leading to dehumanization; one example is the picture of Aylan Kurdi, a two-year-old Syrian refugee boy who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea along with his mother and brother while crossing it in an overcrowded boat. Nothing pricked the consciousness among people like the image of this small boy face-down in the lap of the waves did. Social psychology has described the ‘identifiable victim effect’ in detail (Lee & Feeley, 2016; Slovic, 2007), whereby we engage in more pro-social ways (e.g., increased charity donations (Zagefka et al., 2011a) when textual and visual information concern the suffering of a single individual rather than that of large groups.
While framing and visually representing refugees in the media, using specific phrases and rhetoric to explain the presentation can undoubtedly affect public perception of refugees and migration. Language is an effective tool and can have a natural influence or power on people. Describing refugees in the media as “flood,”‘ deluge,” or ” tide’ or using descriptors such as ‘swarm’ can have a significant impact on how the public perceives the onset of refugees in their countries. The choice of words can indeed lead to dehumanization as perpetrated by the media by engaging in selective literature while covering news about refugees. Terms such as ‘swarm’ are degrading the individual aspect to the level of an insect or a pest. Prime Minister David Cameron was criticized for describing a ‘swarm of people’ entering the UK. While he defended this as an attempt to convey the scale of the situation, such terms reduce the displaced to numbers rather than people, which leads to a ‘denial of humanity’ and promotes the idea of people as dirty or diseased – associations we commonly make with pests. It is not only the terminology but also the interchanging game of words while producing news that can affect how the news is produced. The interchangeable use of the terms migrant/asylum-seeker/refugee is damaging, considering people have been forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution; it leads to the undermining of public support for refugees and the denial of legal protection at the most vulnerable times.
Media today acts as creators, distributors, and gatekeepers of meaning in society, shaping policy decisions as they define newsworthiness, select frames, and portray stories. It can influence perceptions of refugees as legitimate, innocent, or criminal and determine their worthiness for assistance and help. Shaping public opinion through positive or negative narratives can have a direct and massive impact, as we have traced. Positive media narratives are vital in sustaining public and social support during the critical periods refugees experience. Since media representation predominantly influences how we see refugees, a more positively inclusive tone in coverage of refugees or migrants can similarly have a tangible impact on the public reception of refugees in their nations.
References
EuroMeSCo. (n.d.). The Refugee Crisis: Double Standards, Media Framing, and the Proliferation of Positive and Negative Narratives during the Ukrainian and Syrian Crisis. Retrieved from
Langdon, N. (2018, September 6). Empathy and Othering: Framing Syria’s Refugee Crisis in the British Press. Retrieved from https://www.e-ir.info/2018/09/06/empathy-and-othering-framing-syrias-refugee-crisis-in-the-british-press/
Lawlor, A., & Tolley, E. (2017). Deciding Who’s Legitimate: News Media Framing of Immigrants and Refugees. International Journal of Communication, 11, 25.
McCann, K., Sienkiewicz, M., & Zard, M. (2023). The role of media narratives in shaping public opinion toward refugees: A comparative analysis. Migration Research Series, N° 72. International Organization for Migration (IOM), Geneva.
Wright, T. (2002). Moving images: The media representation of refugees. Visual Studies, 17(1), 53-66. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586022000005053
An Example of a dehumanizing headline by Zee News.