Myria Georgiou speaks to ARNIC on the “refugee crisis” in the European press

This week ARNIC welcomed Dr Myria Georgiou to speak to members about her research team’s work on coverage of the “refugee crisis” in European press.

Dr Georgiou is a visiting scholar at USC Annenberg this year and is currently working on two projects: a book on life in the digital city and a new project on the digital making of the city of refuge (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation). She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Communications, LSE where her research focuses on media and the city; urban technologies and politics of connection; and the ways in which migration and diaspora are politically, culturally and morally constituted in the context of mediation.

Dr Georgiou gave a talk titled Representing Others, representing Us: The “refugee crisis” in the European Press in which she presented findings from a cross-country content analysis of coverage the refugee crisis.  The project, which examines 1200 news articles from across eight European countries, identifies the distribution of voice and agency in news coverage in a strictly hierarchical manner that reproduces geo-political hierarchies of the European political spheres and keeps refugees and migrants firmly outside the remit of western communities of belonging. Dr Georgiou terms the framing of coverage as “humanitarian securitization” which encompasses the competing tensions of Europe’s commitments to border security and humanitarian care.

The talk prompted an interesting Q&A session on the applicability of the study’s methods and findings to a wider range of European (and worldwide) political events. ARNIC is fortunate to have members from across the globe, including several Europeans who found the topic to be of particular interest.

The next ARNIC seminar will take place on Tuesday March 6th at 12:30pm. Please email rachelm@usc.edu if you would like to join.