Refugee News, Refugee Politics: Journalism, Public Opinion and Policymaking in Europe

Giovanna Dell’Orto · Irmgard Wetzstein

Sep 2018 · Routledge

About this ebook

The unprecedented arrival of more than a million refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants – plus the political, public, and policy reactions to it – is redefining Europe. The repercussions will last for generations on such central issues as security, national identity, human rights, and the very structure of liberal democracies. What is the role of the news media in telling the story of the 2010s refugee crisis at a time of deepening crisis for journalism, as “fake news” ran rampant amid an increasingly distrustful public?

This volume offers students, scholars, and the general reader original research and candid frontline insights to understand the intersecting influences of journalistic practices, news discourses, public opinion, and policymaking on one of the most polarizing issues of our time. Focusing on current events in Greece, Austria, and Germany – critical entry and destination countries – it introduces a groundbreaking dialogue between elite national and international media, academic institutions, and civil society organizations, revealing the complex impacts of the news media on the thorny sociopolitical dilemmas raised by the integration of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in EU countries.

About the author

Giovanna Dell’Orto is Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and affiliated faculty at the Center for German and European Studies and Department of Political Science. A former journalist with The Associated Press (AP), she is the author of four books on journalism and international affairs, most recently AP Foreign Correspondents in Action and American Journalism and International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2015 and 2013), and coeditor of Reporting at the Southern Borders (Routledge, 2013).

Irmgard Wetzstein is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Communication, University of Vienna, former Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota, and trained mediator. She received her PhD in media communications in 2010 and has been working in social research and teaching since 2006, focusing on journalism and conflict communication, social media, strategic and visual communication. Before that, she worked at the Austrian news magazine profil and the Austrian Insurance Association’s PR division.