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Migrant Objectification in Television News Discourse in the Context of Criminalisation: An Example Concerning Slovenian Public Television Broadcast News

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Causes and Consequences of Migrant Criminalization

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 81))

Abstract

The chapter discusses how the evening news bulletin on Slovenian public television Dnevnik reports about the attempts of migrants to reach Western Europe across the Balkan borders. Based on our analysis of the split-screen television technique utilisation and case studies of two television news bulletins, we argue that migrant objectification, as an effect of television reporting, is the basis for the normalisation of migrant criminalisation. We primarily address reporting where migrants are merely passive objects of control and care, mute objects when spoken of by the media, politicians, police and care providers, and rarely allowed to actively speak on their own behalf and voice their concerns. The combined elements of migrants rarely given voice and so a chance to represent themselves instead of being represented by external instances, and, in some cases, even discursively constructed as an invisible danger, threatening to invade Slovenian (and by extension EU) territory by illegally crossing the Slovenian border, normalises their criminalisation. Additionally, not allowing migrants an autonomous, self-representing voice enables a variety of other discourses, primarily humanitarian discourse and discourse related to securitisation, to be applied to them as exclusively externally defined, mute, and thus objectified topic of discourse.

Jože Vogrinc researched Slovenian Public Television reporting between the summer 2015 and spring 2016 as part of “Research of Cultural Formations” programme conducted at ISH-AMEU in Ljubljana. On the other hand, Rok Smrdelj works on the aforementioned research as a junior researcher in the research programme “Problems of Autonomy and Identities at the Time of Globalisation” (P6-0194) and a scholarship holder of the University Foundation of eng. Milan Lenarčič.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    E.g. Vezovnik (2017a) and Malešič (2017).

  2. 2.

    E.g. Palidda (2008, pp. 19–26).

  3. 3.

    Althusser (2014).

  4. 4.

    Vogrinc (1995). For instance, this approach was also applied to the analysis of TV Slovenija reporting on war in Bosnia (Vogrinc 1996).

  5. 5.

    Pajnik (2016) and Luthar (2017).

  6. 6.

    The term “refugee crisis” is put between quotation marks, in order to be distanced from their ideological assumptions. The word “crisis” namely means condition, which causes a similar concern as a disease and therefore requires specific action.

  7. 7.

    This chapter does not conceptually differentiate between the term “refugee”, “migrant” and “asylum seeker”, pursuant to such distinction being chauvinistic and impractical; consequently, the term “migrant” is used as it refers to all who cross national borders.

  8. 8.

    Hartley (2002, pp. 118–120).

  9. 9.

    As also found by Vogrinc (1996, pp. 11–18), on analysing media reporting on the Bosnian War.

  10. 10.

    Fiske (1987).

  11. 11.

    The term “actants” is used here to denote participants inside the semiotic structure of TV discourse (news presenter, field reporter, interviewees etc.), and should be distinguished from the term “agents”, used above to denote active participants in social communication versus social actors reduced in social communication to mere topic of discourse of others.

  12. 12.

    Fiske (1987, pp. 281–308). Critique in Vogrinc (1996, pp. 17–18).

  13. 13.

    Connell (1980).

  14. 14.

    Ellis (1982, pp. 164, 170 etc.).

  15. 15.

    Vogrinc (1995, pp. 152–158); Vogrinc (1996, p. 17).

  16. 16.

    Vogrinc (1996).

  17. 17.

    As seems to be a paradigmatic response to reporting on war in Bosnia by Preston (1996a, pp. 112–116).

  18. 18.

    E.g. Bruno (2016), Holmes and Castañeda (2016), Szczepanik (2016), Malešič (2017).

  19. 19.

    E.g. Fotopoulos and Kaimaklioti (2016), Greussing and Boomgaarden (2017), Chouliaraki and Stolic (2017), Georgiou and Zaborowski (2017), Vezovnik (2017b).

  20. 20.

    Hellman and Lerkkanen (2017).

  21. 21.

    Luthar (2017).

  22. 22.

    Vezovnik (2017a).

  23. 23.

    Georgiou and Zaborowski (2017).

  24. 24.

    Ibid., p. 3.

  25. 25.

    Chouliaraki and Stolic (2017, p. 1174).

  26. 26.

    The list of all broadcast television news reports about the refugee crisis and transcriptions from the summer 2015 is updated and complemented on a weekly basis and kept by the authors.

  27. 27.

    Gow et al. (1996).

  28. 28.

    E.g. Vogrinc (1996, pp. 11–18), Preston (1996b, pp. 119–125), Bašić-Hrvatin (1996, pp. 158–165).

  29. 29.

    E.g. Preston (1996a, p. 113).

  30. 30.

    Georgiou and Zaborowski (2017, p. 3).

  31. 31.

    See Vogrinc (1995).

  32. 32.

    E.g. TV programme Dnevnik, broadcast on 25 October 2015, TV programme Dnevnik, broadcast on 14 November 2015.

  33. 33.

    E.g. TV programme Dnevnik, broadcast on 17 October 2015.

  34. 34.

    We use Laban’s (2007) method of presenting transcriptions, as below, in a table with visual summaries in the first column and verbal expressions in the second. Furthermore, we cite her shot typology: the establishing shots are the widest and provide the broadest possible view of an event, nature, people, and so on; long shots usually show a person in their entirety; medium shots show people from the waist up; and, lastly, close-ups show people from the neck up, though such shots may include their shoulders (close-ups also imply details, e.g. footprints in the snow). It must be emphasised that the aforementioned shots are ideal types. Therefore, we cannot always precisely specify only one-shot type. However, they are being used to better imagine progression and continuity of television news.

  35. 35.

    It must be pointed out that both of the following transcriptions of television news stories were not directly gained by the national Radio-Television of Slovenia. However, they were made by Rok Smrdelj. The original sources of the both evening news bulletin are available at links listed at the end of this chapter.

  36. 36.

    Hall et al. (1992).

  37. 37.

    E.g. Kogovšek Šalamon and Bajt (2016, p. 9).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Rok Smrdelj & Jože Vogrinc

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  1. Rok Smrdelj
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  2. Jože Vogrinc
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Correspondence to Jože Vogrinc .

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  1. Peace Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Neža Kogovšek Šalamon

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Smrdelj, R., Vogrinc, J. (2020). Migrant Objectification in Television News Discourse in the Context of Criminalisation: An Example Concerning Slovenian Public Television Broadcast News. In: Kogovšek Šalamon, N. (eds) Causes and Consequences of Migrant Criminalization. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 81. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43732-9_14

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