Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

This paper, focusing on recent and current migration events, begins with the wide acknowledgement that mass media, especially news media, are the dominant sources of the material from which individuals and groups construct their social realities. This remains firm, even in the face of the expansion of social media, which largely offer users affirmation and confirmation of existent beliefs, rather than prompt the formation of new ones. For both migrants and residents of host/receiving countries and communities, perceptions of what to expect are formed well ahead of the parties having personal contact with one another, and are framed largely by mass media reports. Historic and current literature on the portrayal of migrants across the mass media spectrum, the recurrent motifs and images of the narratives, reports of the lived experiences of migrants recently settled in unfamiliar cultural contexts, reports of the lived experiences of members of host/receiving communities, and the ways in which media-influenced expectations held by both have been confirmed or nullified are all examined.