Far right movements in Germany and evaluation of media discourse of criminal immigrant in the light of official documents Cover Image

Almanya’da aşırı sağ hareketler ve medyanın suçlu göçmen söyleminin resmi belgeler ışığında incelenmesi
Far right movements in Germany and evaluation of media discourse of criminal immigrant in the light of official documents

Author(s): Soner Tauscher
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Media studies, Migration Studies, Ethnic Minorities Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Germany; far right movements; refugees; asylum seekers; agenda setting; crime and safety reports;

Summary/Abstract: Flows of regular worker migration and regular asylum seekers, of whom European countries are familiar, have significantly changed since 2013/2014 when the civil war of Syria reached its peak. The European Union face probably the most intensive refugee migration since its establishment. European societies and states have not been prepared for this uncontrolled and compulsory immigration. Germany seem to want to turn the refugee crisis into an economic opportunity as evident in their open door policy since the summer of 2015. However, implementation of open-door policy has led a substantial part of German society to a strong campaign against the refugees and Muslims. Refugees and Muslims are referred to as “rapists”, “invaders”, “criminal fraudsters”, and so on in demonstrations of far right movements and media has helped disseminating these discourses. Hence, this manipulated and hateful discourse tries to gain support from the segment of society wh normally does not support far right and often apolitical, or tolerant towards asylum seekers. In this study, the ways in which the negative discourse of far right social movements against immigrants is brought to the centre of the political agenda by media is analysed using the agenda setting framework by McCombs and Shaw. Then, the claims that immigrants are involved in crime, or they are prone to be criminals are analysed and contrasted with the data obtained from the annual Crime and Safety Reports of the German Ministry of the Interior.

  • Issue Year: 4/2017
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 201-226
  • Page Count: 26
  • Language: English