Chapter Four: Contents in Deutsche Welle 1. Content Analysis
1.1 News Source
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Chapter Four: Contents in Deutsche Welle 1. Content Analysis
In this section, 123 news articles regarding Cologne sexual assaults and general refugee issue, carried between January 4 and January 18, 2016 in Deutsche Welle, were examined with three coding items, including the news source, the labels depicting the displaced people, and the themes. The results are illustrated in the following paragraphs.
1.1 News Source
To find out which sources dominated the refugee news coverage, this study examined the articles by identifying six key speakers in each of the reports, including politicians, police, NGOs, citizens, other experts, and refugees. The results demonstrate the proportion of each news source quoted in the total 123 articles. See Table 1 for some statistics.
Table 1 Percentage and frequencies of each news source in Cologne incident news coverage in Deutsche Welle
News Source Percentage (Total N articles) Politicians/ Officials/ Governments and government
reports
63.4% (78)
Police/ Judiciary 31.7% (39)
NGOs 13.8% (17)
Citizens 13.8% (17)
Other experts (Academia, Religion etc.) 13.8% (17) Refugees/ Asylum seekers/ Migrants 12.2% (15) 1.1.1 Politicians
Among the 123 news articles, politicians were the main speakers in the reports, with 63.4% of the articles (78 articles) quoting politicians. The massive sexual assaults in Cologne
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were the most discussed issue. A dominant stance that many politicians possessed was to threaten foreign criminals with deportation. For example, a statement quoted from the interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, on January 6, 2016 said, “Anyone who commits serious crimes must reckon with getting deported from Germany, regardless of his status” (Deutsche Welle, January 6, 2016).
The Cologne sexual assaults stirred up Germany’s refugee debate, with many people linking the perpetrators with the recently-arrived asylum seekers. Countering with the
anti-refugee sentiment, the authorities and some politicians, left-wing politicians in particular, served key roles by appealing to the public not to place blame on the refugees for the assaults.
For instance, on January 6, 2016 when being asked whether refugees were responsible for some of the attacks, the German Justice Minister Heiko Maas declined to answer the question and only replied, “This is not about where someone is from but what they did.” He also warned against exploiting the incident in order to place blame on the refugees. Maas stated,
“Making an issue out of it, lumping it together with the refugee issue, is nothing but exploitation. Now is the time to determine the facts and then decide on the necessary consequences” (Deutsche Welle, January 6, 2016).
Besides the refugees, the police were mainly blamed due to their inability to control the situation during the New Year’s Eve incident and withholding the information that many perpetrators were asylum seekers. On January 6, 2016 the Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere criticized the Cologne police force for waiting passively while the attacks were taking place. He stated, “The square was evacuated – and then these events take place and [the police] wait for people to bring them complaints. That’s not how police must work”
(Deutsche Welle, January 6, 2016).
Another prominent issue among the political debate was that some of the European countries, including Sweden and Denmark, announced that they were going to impose border control policy in order to stem the “refugee tide.” For example, on January 4, 2016 the
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Swedish Migration Minister Morgan Johansson defended the country’s policy move by telling the reporters that Sweden was “preventing an acute situation where we can no longer welcome asylum seekers properly” (Deutsche Welle, January 4, 2016).
Such policy change was especially criticized by German politicians who were concerned that the move would harm the freedom of movement in the Schengen area. An EU-wide solution which aimed to secure the EU’s external border was deemed to be the priority in order to cope with incoming refugees. For instance, on January 4, 2016 the German foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer criticized the border control policy for putting the Schengen area “in danger”, “Freedom of movement is an important principle - one of the biggest achievements [in the EU] in recent years” (Deutsche Welle, January 4, 2016). The solution to the influx of migrants did “not lie on the border between Country A and Country B,” said the Chancellor’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, reiterating the
administration’s determination to find an EU-wide solution to the refugee crisis (Deutsche Welle, January 4, 2016).
1.1.2 Police/ Judiciary
The police and members of the judiciary, including judges and prosecutors, were quoted less often than the politicians, but they still possessed a prominent role in the news coverage, with 31.7% (39 articles) of the articles citing their statements. Since the police were the main authority to investigate the Cologne sexual assaults, most of their statements tended to describe the situation during the New Year’s Eve and the following investigations.
1.1.3 NGOs
Non-government organizations (NGOs) attracted relatively less attention in the news as well as the citizens and other experts, such as academics and clergy, with each category receiving 13.8% (17 articles) of the news coverage.
NGOs tended to have two major concerns. Firstly, they were concerned about the
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refugees’ journey to Europe. Therefore, in the news articles NGO workers often illustrated the dangerous situations the asylum seekers have suffered on their journey. For example, on January 18, 2016 Amnesty International released a report regarding sexual assaults on female asylum seekers during their journey:
“After living through the horrors of the war in Iraq and Syria these women have risked everything to find safety for themselves and their children,” Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International's Crisis Response director, said in a news release. “But from the moment they begin this journey they are again exposed to violence and
exploitation, with little support or protection.” (Deutsche Welle, January 18, 2016) Secondly, the NGOs tended to be concerned about the conditions after the refugees have arrived in Germany. Issues regarding living conditions in shelters, the arson attacks on refugee accommodations, and the distribution of the refugees were all included. Bernd Mesovic, the deputy director of Pro Asyl, a non-governmental organization that works to protect the rights of refugees in Germany, revealed that a total of 126 arson attacks on refugee accommodation took place in 2015. He concluded, “You get the feeling it was sheer luck that no one died in 2015” (Deutsche Welle, January 18, 2016).
1.1.4 Citizens
The arguments of the citizens showed that nowadays the German society was
becoming polarized. One of the dominant public opinions was that the refugees were mainly blamed for the sexual assaults in Cologne. These opinions were especially contributed by far-right extremist group PEGIDA supporters. After the Cologne incident, PEGIDA organized several demonstrations in different cities to protest against Merkel’s open-door policy. One PEGIDA supporter stated, “To me, it simply doesn’t make sense that Germany will keep bringing them and supporting them if they are committing criminal offenses here. No other country would tolerate that” (Deutsche Welle, January 9, 2016).
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On the contrary, there was also a predominant argument which revealed a relatively neutral attitude toward refugees. For example, many women argued that sexual assaults happened every day and such violence had nothing to do with the origins of the assailants.
One female citizen stated, “When will people understand that this is not about refugees? This is about us, women, who live under this threat of sexual assault on a daily basis” (Deutsche Welle, January 9, 2016).
1.1.5 Other Experts
A wide range of experts were interviewed, including sociologists, psychologists, political analysts, media experts, lawyers, religious experts, and labor market analysts. These experts were invited to comment on a variety of issues, such as the refugee debate in other countries, how news media reported refugee issues, the deportation laws in Germany, and so on.
Experts were frequently invited to explain why a certain phenomenon happened. For instance, a psychologist was asked about factors resulting in sexual assaults and the links with ethnicity. The rhetoric from these experts tended to be more neutral and cautious. The psychologist replied:
I would be very careful here, because there are very few studies and very often in these studies ethnicity is mixed up with other differences. When you compare ethnic Arabs with ethnic Germans, ethnicity is usually not the only thing that distinguishes between the two groups. (Deutsche Welle, January 7, 2016)
1.1.6 Refugees/ Asylum Seekers/ Migrants
The refugees or immigrants appeared to be the least significant speaker in the news, with 15 articles (12.2% of the coverage) citing their opinions. Their opinions mostly appeared in the Cologne-related news in which they reiterated that the sexual assailants did not
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represent all of the refugees and such sexual violence was forbidden in Islam culture. One refugee stated, “What I have to say is that those who carry out such attacks do not represent us Arabs or as Muslims. A lot of refugees are Muslims and our religion and education forbid something like this” (Deutsche Welle, January 6, 2016).
In other stories refugees described the dangerous journey to Europe and the difficult situation when they were stuck at the borders due to the changed border control policy. Two quotations are given below. The first quotation represents a female refugee who depicted her fears and her situation on the trip to Europe:
The tents were all mixed and I witnessed violence... I felt safer in movements, especially on the bus, the only place I could shut my eyes and sleep. In the camps we are so prone to being touched, and women can’t really complain and they don’t want to cause issues to disrupt their trip. (Deutsche Welle, January 18, 2016)
The second quotation comes from a 25-year-old Afghanistan refugee who was stuck at the German/ Austrian border because the German government had announced that it would not let refugees pass through Germany to other countries. People who were not seeking asylum in Germany would not be allowed to cross the border. The asylum seeker described her situation and wishes, “We don’t want to disturb the people of Austria. We don’t want to disturb anyone. The only thing I want is to go to Sweden.” She then added, “We spent too much money. We crossed a difficult way and now the government of Germany refuses us and sends us back here. We want to live in peace, we want to be comfortable” (Deutsche Welle, January 14, 2016).
The results of news source analysis are similar to the previous findings that experts appear to be the most significant news source while the refugees and asylum seekers remain the least quoted actors (Philo et al., 2013). The Deutsche Welle news samples reveal that politicians frequently threaten the foreign criminals with deportation. Such findings coincide
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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.