Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The vast influx of people coming to Europe from the Middle East and Africa led to a so-called “migration/refugee crisis” in 2015. Media played a crucial role in framing the situation as “the crisis.” Czech media caused panic by referring to migrants as a threat, despite the fact that the main migration routes avoided the country. Many surveys focused on textual analysis, so there is still a lack of studies aimed at visual frames. This project seeks to explore ways visual frames of the European migration crisis have been created and established in the most read Czech daily newspaper, and the monthly magazine, “Reportér”. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper investigates visual frames as they have been appearing within the photojournalistic news coverage of European migration crisis from 2015 to 2018, and examines their transformation throughout the years in the selected Czech print media. Drawing on the principles of visual framing analysis, the project scrutinizes the European migration crisis through visual communication and journalists’ ability to frame the events. The analysis adopts proven methods and test picture frames, which have already been described and used in other researches, but it also defines new visual frames that are related to Czech cultural environment, and will point out repetitive, deep-rooted motives that are socially understandable. The methodological toolkit is based on Erving Goffman’s theory of framing, with particular emphasis on the work of Robert M. Entman, Ilija Tomanić Trivundža and Katy Parry.