Chapter Three: Methodology
2. Gathering Audience Responses toward Refugee Crisis
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employed in the discourse structures in the press regarding ethnic reporting. These strategies include some implications and presuppositions that aim to obliquely assert some facts which may not be true. Van Dijk also referred to the metaphors and some negative lexicons
expressed to make the abstract mental models more concrete. Moreover, passive sentences may be used to downplay the negative actions of state agents. The present study took his approach of analysis to specify the strategies employed in the Deutsche Welle reports.
a. Actor analysis was employed to examine one typical news article regarding Cologne sexual assaults. By doing so, this study aimed to see which role dominated the coverage and which actor was neglected in the news.
b. 123 refugee articles were examined to identify the number or statistics used in describing the arriving refugees in 2015.
2. Gathering Audience Responses toward Refugee Crisis
A series of focus group discussions were carried out to answer research question 2.
2.1 Focus Group Discussion
Hennink, Hutter, and Bailey (2011) have noted that focus group discussions are especially suitable for “exploring new topics about which little is known or where the issues are unclear.” As discussed in the previous paragraphs, little is known on the topic of media influences on the audience’s daily lives and how their personal experiences counteract the news effects. This is due to the majority of prior studies focusing primarily on attitude change and did not probe more on personal experiences. By employing focus group discussions, participants are encouraged to share their own opinions and stories and to give more concrete pictures of their daily lives under the refugee crisis.
When exploring research objects’ opinions, a frequently asked question is whether to use in-depth interviews or focus group discussions. Hennink et al., (2011) argued that focus group discussions are employed in the situation when gaining a broad range of views in a
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single episode of data collection. Since the study took a special attention on the different experiences between German, European, and Middle-Eastern students (discussed in detail in the next section), it would be more economical to gather a range of views in a short period of time by employing focus group discussions. Moreover, the interactive nature of the method could facilitate further discussion between participants, “providing greater detail and uncovering various facets of the issues” which the researcher might have overlooked (Hennink et al., 2011).
This study aims to explore how news coverage influenced audience interpretations toward refugees as well as their daily lives and how either personal experiences or
interactions with refugees counteracted the refugee images formulated in the news media. A wide range of opinions among different ethnic groups of students were gathered through focus group interviews. The findings could fill in the blanks in the field of ethnic news and audience studies, and illustrate the dynamics between news influence, audience interpretation, and the daily lives of the participants during the recent refugee issue in Germany.
2.2 Group Composition
The study narrowed the interviewees down to German students and international students in the universities in Kiel, Germany. Based on my own experience that my parents usually connected refugees with terrorism since they often read such news in Taiwanese media, the study is especially interested in the difference between German students and international student’s perception toward the refugee issue. Therefore, the interviewees were categorized into a German group and an international group. The international group was further categorized into a European student group and a Middle-Eastern student group since students from these two areas were more concerned about the refugee issue. To test if the interview questions were workable, one pilot interview with my friends which included three Asian students and one Afro-Caribbean student was conducted one month before the formal
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interviews.
The recruitment process began in the middle of October, 2016. Most of the
Middle-Eastern and European participants were invited through the pilot interviewees while the German participants were mostly recruited from the students who lived in the same dorm.
One participant was attracted by the recruitment advertisement I posted on some Facebook groups. It should be noted that it was not easy recruiting European students since many of them were exchange students. During the recruiting process, most of my European friends had already returned home while others were not willing to join the discussion because they did not want to share their opinions with others. After exhausting each avenue, including invitation through friends, ads on Facebook, cafeteria, and dorms, only three European students participated in the discussion.
The study ultimately recruited two groups of German interviewees with four and three members in each group. In regard to the European participants and the Middle-Eastern
participants, each group consisted of four and five members respectively. It is worth noting that two refugees from Syria joined the European and Middle-Eastern group interviews. The participants were either bachelor or master degree students except for one refugee who had already obtained his PhD years prior and who currently works in Kiel.
2.3 Interview Questions
This study referred to interview questions from Philo et al. (2013) and Philo and Berry (2004), and developed its own interview questions to explore how the news media influenced the audiences’ interpretations and their daily lives, and how personal experiences counteracted the negative portrayals of refugees and asylum seekers. See appendix 2 for the list of interview questions.
2.4 Conducting the Focus Group Discussion
In the interviews, I first introduced the purpose of the research and addressed the
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ethical issues as well as rights the participants were entitled to, including assuring the
protection of their personal information and seeking consent for recording the discussion. The participants were then asked to answer some general questions, such as the image of refugees, the news headlines of the refugee issue, and the influences on their interpretations and daily lives, in writing which formed the basis for subsequent discussion. By asking the general questions first, the participants were invited to share their own opinions and experiences and therefore created a more comfortable environment for further discussion. I was then able to ask some specific questions the study was concerned with, including the differentiation between immigrant and refugee and the statistics used in news coverage. The interviews took place in relaxing and quiet spaces, including the participants’ dorm, a study room in the dorm, and the student cafeteria. Cakes, cookies, and tea were offered to make the participants feel more relaxed. Each interview lasted around 90 minutes.