Paper details
| Paper authors | Hannah Copeland |
| In panel on | Mis/disinformation during crises: is humanitarianism part of the problem or the solution? |
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Abstract
This paper examines representations of diverse groups of refugees in France by the traditional French print media, and their influence.
Addressing the power of discourse and questioning the nature and forces underpinning politicisation and mediatisation of refugees, it looks through the theoretical lenses of Benedict Anderson's 'Imagined Communities' (1983) and Said's postcolonial scholarship on Orientalism (1978), to understand the significance of the source of this treatment.
With Fairclough's three dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis, it examines how refugee identities are constructed through nationalist narratives. The study argues that print media discourse on refugees reflects not only national policies to refugee flows, but images of the self-identity of the host nation, France, and perceptions of the ‘Other.’
Exploring how paradoxes of insider/outsider, politicisation/depoliticisation, Self/Other influence attitudes to refugees in France, it proposes fragmented media representations of refugees and positioning of the 'Other' in relation to the national self originate in colonial histories, reproducing social hierarchies of power, evident in existing inequalities within national and supranational refugee responses.
It proposes a reconsideration of the meaning and power of universalism, freedom, equality and fraternity discourse to create and sustain ‘imagined communities’ and calls for further research to reimagine national ways of being and knowing in relation to ‘Other’ in a changing global reality.
