The Role of Media in Shaping Public Perception of Immigrants

Immigration has become one of the most important topics in the political debate and the public media for the last decade. This study analyzes the patterns of words that the press uses to describe immigration and immigrants. We will focus on conceptual metaphors and their linguistic manifestations in the British, American and Croatian mainstream newspapers. This study attempts to gain an understanding of the strategic use of conceptual metaphors to construct and shape the context of the immigration discourse. The cognitive theory is outlined (see Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Kövecses 2002, Goatly 2007, Barcelona 2000, Croft et al. 2004) and applied to the immigration discourse as found in the public media (see Wodak 2015, van Dijk 2000, Cunningham-Parmeter 2012, Musolff 2015, Drulak 2006, etc.). The results of the analysis of a representative data of immigration metaphors show that a small set of 'conceptual frames' underlies the perception of immigrants. Several competing metaphors have been identified: immigrant=alien, migration=water, flood, immigration=movement/journey, etc. These metaphors are constantly repeated in different discourses that revolve around the concept of immigration. This study empirically attempts to identify how the media formulates its views about the migrants. In exploring the phenomenon of immigration we have used an interdisciplinary approach, combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, including socio-political and linguistic perspectives. The outcome of this research may provide the relevant source for future research to measure media’s role in shaping and defining public opinion about immigration issues.