The issue of asylum seekers and refugees has again grown in importance since 2014. Europe received 1.321.560 asylum claims in 2015, mainly by Syrian, Afghani and Iraqi refugees. Germany received the highest number of asylum applicants, followed by Sweden and Austria (Eurostat, 2016). One of the recent developments, which has received considerable critical attention, were the criminal activities on the night of December 31st, 2015 in Germany. Victims in Cologne (821), Hamburg (351), Düsseldorf (113), Stuttgart (72), Dortmund (28) and Frankfurt (22) pressed charges after sexual assaults, thefts and rapes. In particularly the mass sexual assaults in Cologne were highly discussed by national and international media.
The New Year’s celebrations were described as ‘relaxed’ in the official press report released on January 1st by Cologne’s Police department. Wolfgang Albers, the formal chief of the Cologne police, was demanded to resign on January 8th, 2016, after misinforming about the event. Seemingly the authorities tried to hush up the attacks, as national newspaper started reporting on the events from January 3rd (Bild) and 4th (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), 2016. Besides late coverage by newspaper, ZDF, the state owned TV channel, admitted to have failed not to report the attacks on time. The German newspaper Der Spiegel reported an internal police report on the 7th of January 2016. According to police report numerous frightened victims, especially women and girls, reported the criminal activities to the police at the crime scene with explicitly mentioning the perpetrators as groups of male migrants. Police officers could not identify the perpetrators as the report claims that there were not enough forces and too many criminal activities at the same time. Additionally Der Spiegel included personal experiences of police officers with the perpetrators in the news story quoting ‘I am Syrian, you have to treat me kindly, Mrs. Merkel has invited me’ and ‘ You can not send me anywhere, I will earn a new residence permit tomorrow’ (Der Spiegel, 2016). These selectively chosen quotations by media, led to controversy about the framing of refugees in German and European news.
Literature review
The concept of framing is has numerous explanations. According to Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) the best way to describe this phenomenon is: ‘ a conceptual tools which media and individuals rely on to convey, interpret en evaluate information’ (Neuman, Just & Crigler, 1992, p.60). By highlighting specific aspects in news stories and excluding other aspects journalists promote ‘a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendations’ (Entman, 1993, p.52).
Frames can be divided into two main categories: issue-specific and generic frames. De Vreese (2005) used these terms do differentiate between frames for ‘ only specific topics or events’ and ‘with thematic limitations and can be identified in relation to different topics, some even over time and in different cultural contexts’ (p.54). Thus far several studies investigated the usage of frames in news stories (Entman, 1993; Cappella & Jamieson, 1997; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000; De Vreese, 2005; Ter Wal, d’Haenens & Koeman, 2005; Van Dijk, 2006). It has been suggested that frames are created by the following aspects: choice of words, descriptions, selective quotations, characteristic examples, sources of information and over completeness: giving too much irrelevant information.
Existing research recognizes the critical role played by media in reporting news about refugees and asylum seekers (Banks, 2011; Polson & Kahle, 2010). Moral panic is a term described by Cohen (1972) as ‘a person, condition or a group’ (p.9) to be the folk devils that are portrayed as a threat to society. In this process media, described as moral entrepreneurs, plays a major role in spreading fear among public. According to Banks (2011), media does not send out factual news but helps to create folk devils to society. In his research Bank (2011) classifies asylum seekers to be in the grey area, by means of society not being able to identify if the refuge seekers are welcome in their country or not. This makes it easier for the moral entrepreneurs to spread fear and influence society to have a negative view on the issue. Further evidence supporting moral panic may lie in the finding of Van Dijk (2006) who claims the current European newsroom to be ‘nearly exclusively white […] and contributes to lacking diversity in professional education and newsgathering’ Additionally Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes and Sasson (1992) described the media to be bias as journalists depend on governmental sources that determine which news is newsworthy.
Researchers claimed that people do not have the capacity to completely understand the complex situations in the world (Heider, 1930; Plato, 1945; Groffman, 1974). The term primary framework is used by Groffman (1974) to refer to schemes of interpretation where individuals constantly categorize and decode their observations to make sense of the events around them. In his research to the organization of social experience Groffman (1974) classifies primary frameworks in natural and social frameworks. Natural frameworks are unguided events without human interaction whereas social frameworks are guided by intentional human interaction. The type of frame used by journalists influences individuals’ attitudes and perception towards specific events. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980) the complexity of events in the world can be eased by using metaphors in news to make the issues more imaginable. El Refaie (2001) identified a set of metaphorical themes referring to asylum seekers. Most commonly journalists used the water theme e.g. ‘a new wave of refugees’ and the crime theme e.g. ‘the illegals’. Polson and Kahle (2010) point out in their research that Western media labels immigrants as ‘ invaders of national space’. Consequently, this kind of symbolism makes it easier for public to interpreted refugee news as ‘us’ and ‘them’.
According to Ter Wal, d'Haenens and Koeman (2005) the coverage of negative news without legitimate sources, takes part in creating prejudices. The heuristic-systematic model of information processing (HSM) by Chaiken and Ledgerwoord (2012), proposes the way people receive and process persuasive information in two ways. Firstly, the systematic process is based on understanding the given information by thoroughgoing thinking and reasoning. Secondly, heuristic mode requires less mental effort and follows intuitive rules such as ‘ the news can be trusted’ or ‘ experts know best’ (Chaiken & Ledgerwood, 2012, p.2). According to Reisigl and Wodak (2001) the heuristic mode processes the prejudices created in news articles, which leads to the preservation of ethnic prejudices. Racist reporting is not always on purpose, but are generally the aftereffect of ‘deadlines and lack of resources’ (Van Dijk, 2006).
Ter Wal et al. performed a cross-country analysis (2005) on the representation of ethnicity in the European Union and Dutch domestic news. This monitored that EU and Dutch newspapers mainly cover negative topics with an ethnic dimension. Whereas the representation of ethnic actors was repeatedly negative in news articles while non-ethnic actors were portrayed neutral. Popular newspapers such as De Telegraaf and Algemeen Dagblad showed a higher presence of minorities in news stories, while quality newspaper, Volkskrant and NRC, contributed less to associating people to minority groups. This research tended to focus on overall European news (15 members of the EU) compared to Dutch newspapers. However, very little is known about cross-national framing of sensational and quality newspapers in geographical and culturally close context.
The aim of this research paper is to explore the differences in framing between sensational and quality newspapers in Germany and The Netherlands on the sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve in Cologne. According to De Vreese (2005) there are two approaches to identify frames used in news reports. Firstly, the inductive approach which defines frames after analyzing news stories. Secondly, the deductive method, where frames are based on existing frames. In this paper the deductive method is used. The frames in the analysis partly originate from Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) and Vliegenthart and Roggeband (2007)