Chapter Four: Contents in Deutsche Welle 1. Content Analysis
1.2 Immigrants vs. Refugees
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with the arguments of Jiwani (2006) and Philo et al. (2013) in which expert utterances tend to be more negative since they are often asked to comment on the breaches of norms or threats to social stability. However, the German samples also reveal that politicians hold the main roles and appeal to the public not to blame the refugees for the assaults. Other experts, such as the police, sociologists, and so on, are found delivering rather neutral arguments toward the refugee issue which seems to contradict the previous studies. The results show that Deutsche Welle still relies heavily on the expert sources as other news media while the tone of the utterances tend to be less sharp than prior research suggested.
1.2 Immigrants vs. Refugees
According to the previous literature on the refugee news coverage, describing the displaced people as migrant or immigrant implies that these people do not deserve social aid and international protection while terms such as refugee and asylum seeker would leave the impression that these people need help and thus justify their stay in the host country (Yarris and Castañeda, 2015; Holms & Castañeda, 2016). The present study therefore created three categories of labels to examine which term was most frequently used to describe the
displaced people in Deutsche Welle news reports. The labels were categorized into refugee/asylum seeker, migrant/immigrant, and foreigner. I decided to create the third
category of foreigner because this term represents a neutral position and prior study revealed that neutral terms accounted for parts of the total labels as well (Cardiff School of Journalism, 2015).
Among the 123 news articles, a total of 686 lexicons were identified to describe the displaced people. Refugee and asylum seeker appeared 548 times which accounted for almost 80 % of the total labels. The usage of migrant and immigrant stood at merely 20 % of the labels. The neutral label, foreigner, was only mentioned in three articles. Table 2 shows some statistics of the result.
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The labels, refugee and asylum seeker, were overwhelmingly used to describe people who have arrived in Germany or Europe in 2015. The typical examples were “1.1 million asylum seekers” and “the influx of refugees.” Furthermore, the Deutsche Welle reports tended to depict the issue as a “refugee crisis” rather than “migrant crisis” which was often seen in other news media (“Migrant Crisis,” 2016). Migrant or immigrant, on the other hand, appeared more often in the context describing people who were still awaiting the refugee status or still on the journey. The example below shows the reporter’s intention to clearly define the people who were still waiting for the status result:
In nearby Orsoy there is a hostel where some 500 migrants are living as they await refugee status, a factor that has led to the precautions being taken. (Deutsche Welle, January 15, 2016)
Moreover, the terms migrant and immigrant were especially employed when Merkel’s
“open door” policy was blamed:
Some have accused Merkel of having an “open-door” policy toward migrants, although Germany reintroduced border checks with Austria in September. (Deutsche Welle, January 8 2016)
The result is in line with previous research which found that German news media overwhelmingly used the terms “refugee” and “asylum seeker” to depict those displaced
Table 2 Frequencies and percentage of each labels Refugee/ Asylum
seeker
Migrant/
Immigrant
Foreigner
Frequencies (%) 548 (79.88%) 135 (19.67%) 3 (0.43%)
Total 686 (100%)
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people who arrived in 2015 (Cardiff School of Journalism, 2015). Germany has been one of the friendliest countries to refugees in Europe and that is probably the reason why German media is more likely to employ the appropriate terms defined by UNHCR (see the discussion in chapter 2).
1.3 Themes
Previous studies found that news coverage regarding migration or the refugee issue was often restricted to a small number of themes, such as cultural difference, violence and crime, burden on the welfare system, and policies to stop immigration, etc. (Philo, 1999; van Dijk, 2000). Other ethnic issues such as the contributions of immigrant workers and racism against minorities, for example, were less reported in the news (van Dijk, 2000). These prior findings revealed that news media tended to represent the immigration as a negative issue.
The present study referred to research of Philo et al. (2013) and Holmes & Castañeda (2016) and identified the following six themes to explore which theme dominated the reports while others less appeared: 1. Burden on administration, welfare, and job market, 2.
Discussion on the cultural differences, security threat, and problems that arriving people brought to the host society, 3. The need for “immigration control,” 4. Problems faced by asylum seekers, 5. Contribution of immigration, and 6. Stories about helping refugees/
appealing for “Willkommenkultur,” solidarity, and responsibility to help refugees.
Since it was often to read a special appeal launched by politicians in the news coverage, the study examined the reports with an additional theme - The blame of Cologne sexual assaults should not be generalized to all of the refugees and immigrants. Table 3 shows the coding results. A detailed analysis is given in the next section.
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Table 3 Percentage and frequencies of each theme in Cologne incident news coverage in Deutsche Welle
Theme Percentage (Total N articles)
The need for “immigration control” 29.3% (36)
Discussion on the cultural difference, security threat and problems that arriving people brought to the host society
22% (27)
Problems faced by asylum seekers 20.3% (25)
The blame of Cologne sexual assault should not be generalized to all of the refugees and immigrants
14.6% (18)
Burden on administration, welfare and job market 13.8% (17) Stories about helping refugees/ Appealing for
“Willkommenkultur”, solidarity, and responsibility to help refugees
8.9% (11)
Contribution of immigration 4.9% (6)
1.3.1 The Need for “Immigration Control”
36 articles contained the theme “the need for immigration control.” The dominant issue in these articles was calling for the deportation of the “foreign criminals” after the Cologne sexual attackers were identified as men with “Arab or North African appearance.” Discourses which connected the assaults with Germany’s refugee policy were widespread among
politicians, news media, public debates, and social media. Authorities including the Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, and the Justice Minister Heiko Maas all supported for facilitating the process of deportation.
It should be noted that the authorities were actually the main actor who raised the deportation issue. In the total of 12 articles which centered on the issue, authorities appeared in 10 articles. For example, on January 6, 2016, the German interior minister warned,
“Anyone who commits serious crimes must reckon with getting deported out of Germany,
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regardless of his status.” His rhetoric appeared to be the first official statement calling for deporting criminals.
The subject of the deporting issue was narrowed down to the refugees in the following political discourses. On January 7, 2016, politicians were suggesting facilitating or reducing the hurdles for deporting refugees. According to Germany’s Residence Act, asylum seekers can be deported as a result of a prison sentence of one year. For those who are already recognized as refugees, they enjoy the same legal rights as other foreign nationals and can only be deported once they are sentenced to “a prison term of at least three years for a crime or a particularly serious offense.” This legal situation heated the debate. A lawyer commented,
“A lot has to happen to get three years here in Germany, and a one-year prison sentence is often also something very serious” (Deutsche Welle, January 7, 2016). People often justified the politicians’ suggestion to facilitate deportation. Less than one week later, the governing party CDU has made a draft to remove deportation hurdles.
But the decision to deport a refugee could once again cause the refugee serious harm or human rights abuses in his/her home country and could contradict “the whole spirit of the Geneva Convention.” Such argument did not occupy much news coverage and was usually mentioned in only one sentence in the last paragraph of a news article. For example, one article stated, “The process of deporting refugees might be complicated given the legal repercussions of expelling someone to a war-torn country such as Syria, where they could face death” (Deutsche Welle, January 8, 2016).
Other counter-arguments, including criticism toward lawmakers for narrowing the assault debate to just foreign perpetrators, emphasized that these sexual attackers did not represent all of the refugees or insisted that the current laws were strict enough to punish the criminals, appeared even less in the news coverage. Among the 12 news articles regarding the deportation issue, only 6 of them contained counter-arguments.
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1.3.2 The Cultural Differences, Security Threats, and Problems
27 articles contained the theme “discussion on the cultural differences, security threats, and problems that arriving people brought to the host society.” The cultural difference
between locals and new comers was mainly discussed in the articles and was particularly connected with the Cologne sexual assaults. A recurring argument in the articles was that
“Islamic culture and European norms are not compatible.” The Chancellor Merkel suggested a discussion on “the fundamentals of cultural co-existence in Germany” on January 7, 2016.
Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker, on January 5, 2016, suggested publishing a code of conduct for Carnival revelers from other cultures “so as not to confuse what is cheerful
behavior in Cologne and what has nothing to do with openness - particularly sexual openness”
(Deutsche Welle, January 5, 2016)
Rhetoric in opinion articles was especially fierce and clearly described the difference between German norms and Islamic culture. An opinion article published on January 6, 2016 argued that “other masculinity norms legitimizing violence have arrived in Germany along with the refugees” and suggested that this is a problem to the German society. Another opinion article written by a Pakistani journalist noted that these men were never ashamed by their behavior and was certain that these men “did it (the sexual assaults in Cologne) with absolute contempt for the European culture, its norms and its people” (Deutsche Welle, January 6, 2016).
1.3.3 Problems Faced by Asylum Seekers
25 articles addressed the theme “problems faced by asylum seekers” with a prominent concern for the rising hatred for refugees and immigrants in German society after Cologne attacks. These hostile behaviors ranged from xenophobic rhetoric on the internet, to the attacks on Muslims, and to the arson attacks on the refugee shelters. The articles were especially concerned about the growing xenophobic sentiment connected with right-wing
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groups and often cited authorities to condemn their violent behaviors. One of the articles reported as following:
In light of the growing violence against refugees, Münch warned against vigilante groups and the emergence of right-wing terror cells, modeled after the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground. The police therefore “need rapid identification results and judgments in order to break the momentum of right-wing extremist offenses,” Münch said. “Otherwise, in the worst case scenario, terrorist groups can form” (Deutsche Welle, January 17, 2016).
The news coverage also covered other issues the asylum seekers were faced with, including the dangerous journey to safe countries, the situation in their home countries, stories about refugees restricted movement due to the changing border control policies, and the terrible living condition in the shelters. It should be noted that the news coverage rarely focused on how refugees integrated into the German society. Only one article reported the problems refugees encountered while searching for a job.
1.3.4 The Blame on Refugees Should Be Avoided
18 articles contained the theme “the blame of Cologne sexual assault should not be generalized to all of the refugees and immigrants.” A high proportion of these appeals were launched by the officials and the left-wing politicians to counteract far-right politicians and extremists’ xenophobic sentiment who linked the sexual assaults with the recently-arrived refugees. For example, on January 10, 2016, the justice minister, Heiko Maas argued, “To assume from somebody’s origin whether or not they are delinquent is quite reckless.” He also accused the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the anti-Islamization PEGIDA marches of using Cologne for propaganda purposes, saying, “There is the only way they can explain how shamelessly they operate their sweeping campaign against foreigners” (Deutsche Welle, January 10, 2016)
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In addition to the officials, the refugees and Muslim immigrants were also the prominent speakers in the news coverage with this theme. In contrast to the officials who usually blamed the right-wing groups for stirring up the anti-refugee sentiment, the refugees defended themselves saying that “all of these things are forbidden” in Islam culture and these offenders “do not represent us as Arabs or as Muslims”(Deutsche Welle, January 16, 2016).
The other argument, usually claimed by women, saying that “we live under this threat of sexual assault on a daily basis” regardless of culture and country, appears rather less often in the news coverage (Deutsche Welle, January 9, 2016).
1.3.5 Burden on Administration, Welfare and Job Market
17 articles contained the theme “burden on administration, welfare, and job market.”
Administration burdens were the dominant issue among the stories while only one article showed the concern about worsening the welfare system. Authorities, such as the Swedish Migration Minister Morgan Johansson, spoke about implementing a cap on incoming
refugees or making the decision to enact border controls by giving the excuse that they could
“no longer welcome asylum seekers properly”(Deutsche Welle, January 4, 2016).
Another recurring issue the articles addressed was that there was a “backlog” of unprocessed asylum applications due to the huge amount of coming people. The governments as well as humanitarian services were frequently described as “overwhelmed” and these overwhelmed organizations were “struggling to cope with” the influx of asylum seekers.
Counter-argument was almost never seen in the news coverage. Only one article quoted NGO workers and criticized the German government for offering “unacceptable” accommodations for asylum seekers.
Vivid rhetoric, including the statements from the Swedish migration minister, Morgan Johansson, in which he said “1,000 school classes” of refugees will be “arriving in Sweden in four months,” as well as other statements from workers responsible for managing some
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courses for asylum seekers were addressed. Such descriptions could evoke an intense image that the host societies were truly “overwhelmed” by the influx of refugees.
1.3.6 Helping Refugee Stories/ Appealing for Solidarity
The theme “stories about helping refugees/ appealing for ‘Willkommenkultur,’
solidarity, and responsibility to help refugees” was relatively rare with only 11 stories among the 123 articles carried out during this period. Four stories quoted politicians who launched appeals for continuing welcoming the refugees and condemned other politicians’ suggestion of a cap on refugees. Three articles quoted Pope Francis’s call to European countries to keep offering “safe haven” to the people. Other stories illustrated how local people helped refugees integrate into the society and how the NGO workers offered aid in the refugee camps.
However, these stories only appeared in two or three articles.
1.3.7 Contribution of Immigration
The theme “contribution of immigration” appeared to be the least common issue in the news coverage during this period of time with only 6 articles containing the subject.
Among the articles, two of them focused on the boost of the population and work force thanks to the large number of people arriving in Germany which was the main concern when the Chancellor Merkel persuaded German citizens to support her open-door policy at the beginning of the refugee crisis. Other articles described the stories in which refugees
successfully integrated into the local society or refugees helped free women from the sexual assaults during the New Year’s Eve in Cologne.
The result accords with previous findings that news media tend to focus on negative topics, including controlling immigration, emphasizing on cultural background, and framing the asylum seekers as burdens (Philo, 1999; van Dijk, 2000). However, it was also found that a large number of Deutsche Welle reports highlighted the problems facing the asylum seekers and the appeals against blaming the refugees for the Cologne sexual assaults. Conflicting to
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the research of Holmes & Castañeda (2016) which revealed that issue regarding solidarity and “Willkommenskutur” (culture of welcome) served as a prominent theme in German newspapers, this issue appeared less than 10 percent in the Deutsche Welle articles. Stories referring contribution of the asylum seekers were rarely seen in the news reports.
1.4 Summary
The massive sexual assaults that took place in Cologne had been a watershed event for Germany. The political discourses as well as the refugee policies had become more tightened and unfriendly toward the asylum seekers. The most urgent and significant policy change was to deport the criminal migrants. On January 7, 2016, The Chancellor Merkel announced that she would pay close attention to the issue of “deporting migrants found to have broken the law” (“Merkel says Cologne NYE assaults,” 2016). Apart from Merkel, the interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, and the justice minister, Heiko Maas, all backed such policy change (“Merkel backs faster deportation,” 2016).
As discussed previously, the deportation subjects were ultimately narrowed down to the entire group of refugees. In addition to deporting criminal asylum seekers, the German government was also considering declaring some North African countries like Morocco and Algeria as “safe countries of origin,” making the process of deportation easier (“Germany debates faster deportation,” 2016). Some left-wing politicians and refugees criticized such political move as placing the blame on all of the refugees (“Germany debates faster
deportation,” 2016; Conradis, 2016). These counter-arguments only appeared in less than five articles among the total 123 news stories.
Other than facilitating the deportation procedure, a political focus was placed on Horst Seehofer, the leader of the Bavarian party (CSU), the sister party of Merkel's governing, center-right CDU, who demanded a maximum of 200,000 refugees that Germany could take in every year. His suggestion was initially denied by Merkel, insisting that the resolution of
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the refugee crisis should not rely on an individual country but an EU-wide action (“Merkel rejects Bavarian bid,” 2016).
However, Merkel’s attitude had slightly changed in the aftermath of the Cologne incident. Though the Chancellor still rejected CSU’s suggestion to impose a cap on the arriving asylum seekers in Germany and reiterated an EU-wide solution, including the cooperation with Turkey, securing EU’s external borders, and distributing asylum seekers to other member countries, she had stressed several times in a speech at the annual convention of the Bavarian sister party that the number of refugees must be reduced. She rarely spoke in such tone before (“How New Year’s Eve in Cologne,” 2016).
Some partners within the allies opposed Merkel’s current course and called for a tougher action. For example, the CSU parliamentarian, Gerda Hasselfeldt, suggested turning refugees away at the border if they were not in possession of valid identification (“Chancellor running out of time,” 2016). Her suggestion was not mentioned in the Deutsche Welle reports.
In fact, this study found that the authorities, especially for the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, and the justice minister, Heiko Maas, were the major speakers in the Deutsche Welle reports, announcing and justifying the policy move.
Criticisms toward the new policies as well as calls for tougher measures appeared less in the coverage. These opinions originated from a variety of actors, including allied
politicians, right-wing politicians, and asylum seekers that were discussed previously. It should be noted that the prominent right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party were
politicians, right-wing politicians, and asylum seekers that were discussed previously. It should be noted that the prominent right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party were