Chapter 2 Literature Review
IV. The Research Problem: framing the Roma Immigration Issue in France
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meet at this point where nationalism and the feeling of belonging to a group is opposed to the perceived threat coming from an out-group and the need to protect the nation against this
„enemy‟. This attitude is what causes the rise of racist feelings and discrimination against immigrant in a host society.
Immigrants and ethnic minorities such as the Roma challenge the imagined nation images conveyed in the media discourse. When immigrant populations like the Roma are said to threaten the national security, they are actually perceived as a threat to the social order as imagined by the whole community –or dominant group. The Roma challenge the traditional conception the host society –in the present case that would be France- has of herself, and “challenges to the received wisdom of a given society are depicted as sources of identity crises” (Sutherland, 2005: 190).
This received wisdom is people‟s social reality. Billig says, “our everyday „social reality‟ is always discursively constructed around a concept of the nation which is taken for granted”
(Billig, 1995: 193).
IV. The Research Problem: framing the Roma Immigration Issue in France
Very few studies have taken perspective on one particular aspect of Roma studies in the field of news media. Most newspapers focus on the larger immigrant groups peculiar to each country.
One of the related studies that were examined for the purpose of this paper studied British newspapers and how they portrayed immigration of the Romanians and the Roma. Other studies exclusively focusing on the Roma usually scrutinize the evolution of the Roma identity, not the peculiar immigration problems they face. The Roma are a peculiar ethnic minority: as the first chapter has shown us, they have suffered a long history of persecution, prejudice, and rejection, that is only comparable to the Jews‟ history, with that big difference that the Jews share a same
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faith, while the Roma have no particular religion linking them together, and helping them building a nation-like feeling. They often are forgotten by History –as the Forgotten Holocaust shows it- and the media. Facts about the Roma are usually found in the “News in brief” section, with articles merely covering vandalism, petty crime and so on. The past summer‟s controversy in France propelled them under the media‟s light for the first time in years.
Following the theory of “political instrumentalization” hypothesized by Hallin and Mancini (2004), French dailies of differing political ideologies should also differ in their reconstruction of the issue and in their representations of the Roma immigrants and the other stakeholders like Sarkozy, his party, and the opposition party. This thesis thus intends to examine how the two national French dailies -Le Monde and Le Figaro- resemble or differ in discoursing the economization, securitization and nationalism frames in their reconstruction of the Roma immigration issue. More specifically, this thesis intends to address the following questions:
1) What are the dominant frames in news articles supporting the Roma immigration?
2) What are the dominant frames in news articles against the Roma immigration issue?
3) How did these frames reveal the political instrumentalization of the two French media under study?
4) What, and how, are the main sources referred to in the news articles about the Roma immigration debate in the two dailies?
Most of the research on immigration has focused on representations of immigrants. The present study aims at examining the representation of the Roma as a political tool with respect to the French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the elite press of differing political leanings. This study expects to find two different discourses respectively represented by the two differing elite newspapers under study. One is held by the ruling party, whose aim is to defend the national
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identity and keep it as it is known. The other is the antagonist discourse held by defenders of the Roma minority and the Roma Community itself. The antagonist discourse challenges the taken for granted social reality and according to Billig (1995) the friction between both discourses should result in a national identity crisis.
Besides relying on past findings of economization and securitization frames (both frames encompassing positive as well as negative frames –economic threat, national security threat, identity threat and so forth), this study intends to go beyond these already discovered frames and by examining, as well, the nationalist frame as observed by Billig (1995). The author‟s findings will follow after a detailed elaboration of the analysis in the subsequent method chapter.
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Chapter 3 Method
Studies about immigration can be either qualitative or quantitative: bibliographical or documentational, case studies, speech analysis, content analysis, critical discourse analysis, discussion groups and so forth. Branton and Dunaway (2007) examine negative slant in newspapers coverage of immigration by defining a three category dependent variable about tone of the news reports: positive, neutral and negative. They combined this content analysis together with economics and demographic factors to account for the contextual environment in which a news organization operates. They built their theory on a spatial economic explanation of news and their results of a correlation between negative slant in news and spatial and demographic data were consistent. Merolla and Pantoja (2008) used control groups to examine frames in news.
They used the frames that researchers traditionally agree upon in immigration studies (national security, economics and social instability). Spoonly and Butcher (2009) used content analysis to examine the print media in New Zealand, searching for frames influencing local populations‟
representations of immigrants. On the other hand, Light and Young (2009), who also used the content analysis of print media in their research, developed an issue-related frame to examine the media discourse on immigration that cannot be generalized to all immigration studies (see the Balkanism frame mentioned in Chapter 2). They analyzed the semantic cues and the rhetoric to conduct a social study of the images, imaginings and stereotypes of Romanian immigrants as reconstructed by the media in the UK. Is it interesting to notice that in the body of research review, only the studies conducted by Merolla and Pantoja (2008) and by Spoonly and Butcher
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(2009) actually looked for both negative frames and positive frames. Findings of these studies usually highlight the host population‟s attitudes towards the immigrants, namely the racism inherent in the casual imputation of criminality on the immigrant communities, and the fear that the immigrants‟ presence will lead to unemployment. For studies focusing on news coverage, such as the present study, discourse and framing analysis are often chosen because they allow the best to examine the tone or the slant in news reports.
The majority of the studies on immigration, whether using critical discourse analysis, secondary data analysis, focus groups and so forth, have in common that they research the media‟s influence on the public opinion‟s shaping and transforming. The focus of this thesis is different because it examines not the public‟s attitudes but the resemblance and difference in the choice of frames in two national French dailies of differing political ideologies. The effects of the news reporting on immigration on the public‟s minds are not its concern.
Immigration studies have scrutinized the quality press, tabloid press, and television programs. They also explore the effects of the media‟s influence on the audiences when representing immigrant communities and they all acknowledge that the press and the television play a paramount role in the public‟s mind shaping. The present study uses the French quality press over tabloids as the latter‟s position usually lacks depth in the reconstruction of an issue.
The elite press, in this case, Le Monde and Le Figaro, can help us examine the “political instrumentalization” phenomenon much more clearly than tabloids which are unlikely to find such serious issues as Roma immigration news making.
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51 I.Collection of the Articles for Analysis
The sample consists of full-body news articles published from July 23. 2010 to October 1. 2010 in Le Monde and Le Figaro, the two major national dailies in France. This time period was selected to coincide with the beginning of the political turmoil that started on July 23 when the verdict of a trial involving two people of the Roma community had been rendered. From that date on, newspapers, tabloids, the Catholic Church, the Roma community and other human rights and immigrants associations seized the issue and turned it into a sociopolitical problem that swelled and worsened with time.
The issue was triggered on July 23, 2010 after the media reported a trial involving two people of the Roma Community which was believed to be unfair. From that date on and until October 1, 2010, the issue received an extremely high coverage in the media. From October 1st onwards, the issue lost its vigor as there was a conspicuous drop in the daily number of articles concerning that issue. The news media started reporting that the European Union and the Church had decided not to sue France for its “xenophobic” actions, France and the Vatican reconciled and the European Union dismissed the evidences of human rights‟ violations against France. The loss of interest in the Roma immigration debate coincided with the appearance of a new sociopolitical issue: the pensions‟ funds and the legal retirement age. The immigration issue was barely discussed after the pensions‟ problem rose, supporting the theory of market-driven media and the need of sensationalist news to keep the readership interested. The rather sudden loss of interest in the Roma immigration debate also supports the hypothesis of an issue instrumentalized for political means in the struggle between political forces.
The articles were retrieved in Taipei, Taiwan, from November 2010 to January 2011 through the use of Google search engine and the database LexisNexis at the National Chengchi
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University. Online articles are used because hard copies of the two dailies are not readily available in libraries and other research depositories in Taiwan. The keywords used for the search were: Roms in French (“Roma” in English), immigration (“immigration”) and Discours de Grenoble (“Grenoble‟s speech”).
Every article mentioning the Roma was included, with the idea that even one sentence about them could be reveling something about the daily‟s stance in the debate. The pervasiveness of the Roma debate in the news articles proves the sensationalist aspect of the issue and the place it occupied on people‟s mind. There is no minimum or maximum length in the selection of the articles. Full-body articles were examined to complete the study of the headlines as the latter were not informative enough and their content tended to be repetitious. Very soon, newspapers seemed to have decided to create a special “Roma column” where regular updates of the situation were issued under the same headline day after day.
In total, 249 articles are collected. Among those, 4 were about cultural events and 5 were letters sent by readers, and not written like articles nor analysis pieces, and are not included in the sample. The culture articles advertized for a concert of Roma music or exhibition of art without bringing anything the Roma immigration debate. Using articles about immigration issues, eventually 240 news articles were selected: 140 for Le Monde and 100 for Le Figaro. The sample includes editorials, opinion pieces and interviews of politicians. It also includes analysis pieces and historical retrospectives on the Roma as those retrospectives can possibly account for the construction of Roma‟s representations.
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53 II. Choice of Le Monde and Le Figaro.
Le Monde and Le Figaro are two of the major daily newspapers in France. They are believed to be quality newspapers, providing information according to journalistic professional ethics.
However, these two newspapers are very different from one another. Their different ideologies show through their editorial lines, dividing their readerships in discrete groups. Le Monde and Le Figaro are representative of respectively the left wing party –the Parti Socialiste (the “socialist party”) - and the right wing party –the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (the “union for a popular movement”). Newspapers representing the opinions of extreme parties were not retained for this study as their political views and the subsequent slant in their news reports is too obvious and too subjective to warrant any study.
Le Monde. Le Monde is a generally well-respected daily evening newspaper considered the French newspaper of record. From its inception in 1944, it has demanded and maintained independence to formulate its own policies. This quality newspaper publishes news reports of facts without analysis like other national dailies, but makes a point in providing analysis and opinion pieces as well to bring the reader a complement of information. Some claim Le Monde was formerly the world‟s finest newspaper, enjoying international coverage, political independence and intellectual standards that left other international newspapers like, for instance, The New York Times or the Frankfurter Allgemeine, as provincial rags by comparison. Le Monde has been available on the internet since December 19, 1995. Its web site is: www.lemonde.fr.
The New World Encyclopedia describes its political editorial stance as left and center-left (in France, “left” refers to the socialist political party, and extreme left to the communist party).
Some say it has become more moderate in recent years while other critics contend that its current line is biased against Nicolas Sarkozy and his government.
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Despite its reputation for quality reporting, a book published in 2003 called La Face cache du Monde (“The Hidden Face of Le Monde”) written by Pierre Péan and Philippe Cohen, alleged that its editors had shown partisan bias and engaged in financial dealings that compromised the paper‟s independence. The newspaper‟s objectivity was questioned and critics said the newspaper was geared to profitability logic, while ignoring the journalistic professional ethics.
These critics show that even though Le Monde is believed to have a center editorial stance, it has often supported the left party and its electorate. As the internet Wikipedia informs us, throughout the French history, the paper has repeatedly taken side for the socialist movement.
Some critics also accuse the newspaper of “xenophilism”, i.e. pro-foreigner feeling, with a consequent anti-French feeling. This fact is of utmost importance for the present thesis as it can impact the frames in its news reports of the Roma issue, having Le Monde taking side for the Roma and against the French society.
The readership of Le Monde is one of intellectuals and socialist electorate. It counts a daily audience of 1,895,000 readers among which fifty-six percent of families belong to a wealthy enough socio-professional category. Le Monde totalizes more than 300,000 copies in average per year. In 2006-2007 it sold 320,583 copies, and in 2009 it sold 323,039 copies. It is available in more than one-hundred-and-twenty countries with 40.000 issues distributed abroad.
Since 2003, the daily, like many other French newspapers, faced declining circulation and readership, which many attributed to the publication of The Hidden Face of Le Monde but which actually corresponds to the general financial difficulty the national French dailies are facing nowadays.
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Le Figaro. Le Figaro is the oldest national daily in France and is therefore also much respected. In her book about Le Figaro‟s history, Claire Blandin recounts the papers‟ long tradition. Created in 1826 as a satirical paper, it became in 1866 a daily thanks to the efforts of Hippolyte de Villemessant, an ambitious journalist who acquired a name in the literary and political milieus after he saved Le Figaro from bankruptcy and turned it into a success. By the end of the 19th century, Le Figaro was already an institution in the political and cultural life of the French society. It exerted an unquestionable influence on the public opinion of that time, up to the First World War. At that time, there were already 56,000 issues and 15,000 members. In February 2006, Le Figaro launched its web site: www.lefigaro.fr.
During the First World War, Le Figaro was the first national daily in France. After the war, it represented the opinion of the middle class and its editorial stance is clearly stated as right wing in reaction to the communist and socialist up rise in the French political field. Nowadays, this respected quality daily‟s political editorial stance remains unchanged and is described as right and center-right. In other words, Le Figaro holds conservative ideas and supports the right wing electorate. Some critics consider the paper to be more politically engaged than Le Monde. It has the ambition to be a paper of the opposition, fighting against the left wing political parties. Its Director, Serge Dassault, contended once in an interview given to the French public radio station France Inter that the press must convey healthy ideas and that left-wing ideas are not healthy ones.
As we learn from the Europa World Year Book, Le Figaro is considered the guardian of the French cultural eclectics and many great French authors have contributed with articles. The paper is known for its strong commitment to the French Republican values and symbols and the role of the State. It is the upholder of the French identity, which directly opposes it to Le
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Monde‟s xemnophilist and anti-French stance. The radical political opposition between these two major newspapers is the reason why they have been selected for research. It is believed the analysis of both papers will provide a more comprehensive view of the framing of the Roma‟s expulsions issue and give a deeper understanding of the issue and its multiple implications.
Certainly, the analysis will help understand the political instrumentalization at work in the French media sphere.
Formerly, the circulation of Le Figaro counted people from the Bourgeoisie and aristocrats.
Nowadays, the circulation still counts Bourgeois and also electorate from the right wing (Wikipedia). Le Figaro totalizes more than 300,000 copies, to which we have to add another 70,000 copies distributed for free in universities, airline companies business companies and so forth. In 2008, it sold 330,423 issues, and in 2009, 315,656 issues.
Table 3.1 shows the circulation of both dailies by year from 2003 to 2008.
Table 3.1 Circulation of Le Monde and Le Figaro from 2003 to 2008 by year
Title 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Le Monde 389, 249 371,803 360,610 350,039 358,655 340, 131 Le Figaro 369,706 365,083 337,118 322,818 338,618 330,432 Difference in
readership
19,543 6,880 23,508 27,221 20,037 9,699
Note: Data from the OJD. The OJD is a professional French association whose role is to certify the broadcast, the distribution and the listing of the newspapers, dailies, and other advertisement aids. Wikipedia.
It informs us of two things. First, both newspapers are facing a general decline, a fate shared by the elite press throughout the world. Second, Le Monde has traditionally sold more issues compared to Le Figaro, but after being steady, this gap has been slightly reduced in the past few years (difference of 20,037 copies in 2007 and 9,699 in 2008).
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