Chance or Crisis?
Ireland experienced an unprecedented arrival of immigrants during the years of economic prosperity. The new diversity was met with divided public opinion towards non-Irish and an increasingly selective immigration policy. The media, as a main contributor to public discourse, play an important role i...
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| Format: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden
2016
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| Online Access: | http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-202694 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-202694 http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/20269/Chance_or_Crisis_Migrants_and_the_Irish_Print_Media_1997-2010.pdf |
| Summary: | Ireland experienced an unprecedented arrival of immigrants during the years of economic prosperity. The new diversity was met with divided public opinion towards non-Irish and an increasingly selective immigration policy. The media, as a main contributor to public discourse, play an important role in the construction of migrant images and therefore have a profound impact on such developments. Employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, this study examines whether different immigrant groups have the same chance of favourable or unfavourable portrayal in daily newspapers. Based on the most frequent roles and topics associated with Poles, Nigerians and Chinese, a selection of newspaper articles is subjected to in-depth analysis. The overarching result that there is not one image of the Irish media illustrates how difficult, if not impossible, it is to arrive at findings that can be generalised. Individual newspapers are found to pursuit varying and sometimes covert strategies in the representation of immigrants. It is further shown that immigrants who are perceived as culturally closer to Irishness have a higher chance of favourable portrayal than those who are perceived as culturally more distant. Some commonly accepted perceptions of immigrants are unmasked as myths. |
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