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Project

Image of Immigrants in Media: Thought-provoking Effects (IM²MEDIATE)

Governments, news media and public opinion in Europe are increasingly preoccupied with refugees seeking access to Western Europe. Public opinion is split (if not negative) and generally un- or misinformed (amalgamation across ‘groups’ being one of the problems), and integration policies cannot respond to the needs (see cross-country MIPEX results). This project aims to investigate the dynamic interplay between media representations of the current non-EU immigrant situation with a specific emphasis on the refugee situation on the one hand and the governmental and societal (re)actions on the other. The IM2MEDIATE project combines four complementary multi-stakeholder group perspectives: analysis of news media content and journalism culture, study of societal reactions of the general public, study of push/pull factors in migration from a refugee perspective and policy analysis into national governmental (re)actions across countries with emphasis on Belgium and Sweden as divergent cases. It is the project’s ultimate goal to inventory the multiple public, policy and media voices heard in Belgium on this crucial issue, while learning from practices abroad (with a focus on Sweden), and to formulate recommendations towards a more encouraging integration policy, while lowering anti-immigration and anti-refugee sentiment.

Date:15 Dec 2016 →  15 Mar 2019
Keywords:public opinion, societal policy, policy recommendations, media representation, well-being
Disciplines:Applied sociology