The subject of immigration has always been a continuous and prevalent argument within the British public and media, a double-edged sword that can be debated for eternity. “Racism and anti-racism are powerful twin social forces that will continue to shape news communications through the twenty-first century” (I. Law, Racism and Ethnicity (2010); page 193). Immigration in the United Kingdom isn’t a new topic as historically it can be easily traced back thousands of years. The United Kingdom is a country created by thousands of years of steady invasions, the earliest dating back to the Roman invasion up until the conquest of William the Conqueror; resulting in Britain being a country created by strong influences of a myriad of foreign cultures. However, since the arrival of mass media and it’s dominating influence on the general public, a new image of immigrants has been created – they are criminalised and dehumanised for the newspapers front page stories.
Today, the media has such an intense presence in our lives and society. It can be said that the media is the most influential voice we hear on a daily basis – every day we absorb some kind of media outlet which controls the way we, as an audience and a society, behave in a ‘social norm’. The hypodermic syringe model explains this, proposing that our mass media has such a powerful, direct and instantaneous effect on its audience. It views our society as passive, allowing the media to “inject” their ideologies and manipulate us freely, wanting to trigger a desired response (e.g. mass hysteria to a false moral panic – such as a fake threat of the swamping of “problem” immigrants) (University of Twente). E.M Purse (Media Effects and Society; page 55) stated that “we also rely on mass communication as an advance warning system to alert society in times of danger and crisis” and “[the mass media] allows society to maintain social control by pointing out deviant behaviour and holding it up to ridicule”. This shows that the media has a reputation to be our go to twenty-four-hour immediate live news stream – unconsciously giving the media the power to warp and control what type of news we consume. The portrayal of immigrants and refugees in the media’s eyes is an example of this. The reason why the media can easily create this new ‘folk devil’ (“A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media” S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics; page 1) is those who have little knowledge of foreigners/immigrants are more likely to be influenced by the stories the media prints – also, if there is no other information to contradict what the media has provided, even more so will they be convinced and influenced into believing in what the media has written.
For example, if a person is subjected to only negative and threatening stories regarding immigrants, then that person would very easily believe them to be true, evidenced by M. McCombs (Setting the Agenda: Mass Media and Public Opinion, 2014.) “public attention and perception are influenced by the media and how various characteristics of the media; their content and their audiences mediate these effects”. This creation of a moral panic is not new, in fact the term was created back in the 60s during the moral panic surround the Mods and Rockers. A story about two working class groups that Cohen (2009) argued the media scapegoated – portraying them as two youth groups who were bored, arrogant and enjoyed deviancy. Cohen also implied that mass media, on numerous accounts, misreport and disorientate the news, “the media presentation or Inventory of the Mods and Rockers event is crucial in determining the later stages of the reaction” (Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics; page 18). Although the stories of the Mods and Rockers differs from today’s stories of immigrants, it can still be used in evidence of the highly manufactured news which creates false stories to sell and create hysteria. Immigrants are the new folk devils, thus repeating the loop of moral panic.
In addition, the media presents a condensed and censored reporting of the immigration issues and on the subject of news anchors and journalists, they often include their own personal bias and beliefs into what they relay to us – relating to the two-step flow theory. The two-step flow theory highlights the problem of those in power (or even the ones publishing the media) insert their own messages and believes into the media content – allowing the creators to influence the readers in changing views to match their own. (University of Twente). This theory reduces the credibility of the media source, showing that the media information society is subjected too is becoming less factual and more personal opinion orientated. However, in comparison to the mass media (such like television, newspapers and etc), the internet holds a wide offering of true and unbiased stories to provide an informed view to immigrants showing that not all forms of media coverage enforce the negative outlook onto the migrants.
Hartmann and Husband (1974) conducted an analysis regarding the racist coverage of ethic news and race in newspapers (The Times, Guardian, Express and Mirror to be specific) during the 1960s – they found that immigration, race relations and crime had a majority of negative perceptions in the media. Within these newspapers, the subject of race always combined with the suggestion of violence; similarly, the subject of immigration and legislation to control immigration were also highly covered. Although Hartmann and Husband’s study concentrated on the media’s created impression of black people, the research that was conducted can be used to argue for the obvious racism present in the mass media which thus creates the beginning of a biased stereotype towards migrants. Another study that can support Hartmann and Husband, is Troyna (1981) who’s research provided similar results – that ethnic minorities are violent, lazy, murderous and welfare cheaters. Yet, he found that between the 60s and 70s, the media’s focus switched from immigration problems to the problems created by the immigrants. Troyna (Introductions to Race Relations; page 184) stated “it’s an exaggerated example to make the point that the mass media, through conventionally thought of as conveyors of news, can not only shape our perception of the world, but also affect how we behave and, therefore, in a self-fulfilling way, create realities.” The last research that I’m going to use to support the idea of racism in the media against immigrants is Van Dijk (1991). During the 1980s, Dijk came to an un-waving conclusion that the media is racist – he completely refuses to support his own argument, stating that throughout all the years of legal evidence and previous existing research conducted, it’s already been proven time after time. However, one of the of examples he’s given include the 1985 3,000+ Tamil asylum seekers that were labelled ‘invaders’ (Van Dijk (1991) Racism and the Press; page 235). Furthermore, Van Dijk concluded that “when focusing on immigrant workers, the major topics are human interest issues (nearly half the coverage, especially crime), social affairs, culture, and politics.” These three studies are a mere handful in comparison to the myriad of the same research, majority all concluding with the same results – the media holds a very racism view towards migrants and ethnic minorities. Common findings include such as 1) debates over true statistics, illegal entry, fraudulent activities, control, confinement, and being a threat to society, our culture and nation, 2) crime along with a focus to racialised crime, 3) cultural differences, linking to social problems such as unemployment and homelessness to citizens, and finally 4) ethnic relations, suggesting a tension in society, violence and discrimination (I. Law, Racism and Ethnicity; page 193). This negative coverage showed the knowledge, beliefs and attitudes that is being taught to the public, providing the foundations of the reproduction of racism that the media creates and reinforces to society, but yet the more threatening stories white people read, the more they continue to turn to the mass media for their ‘knowledge’.
A quick Google search of “immigration UK” provides you with pages and pages of news articles, which only a handful offer a semi-positive voice to the subject. On the first page, the only article which speaks (semi) positive view is one from The Guardian, with the headline reading “UK immigration crackdown ‘could send companies to the wall’”. Throughout the article it suggests that Theresa May’s immigration crackdown could leave companies to go “bust” while also warning May to not use derogatory terms while speaking about migrant workers. This offers an insight that even journalists see the racism present in the government, allowing us yet another negative representation of immigrants within British society. However, within all these articles where are all the statistics and true stories? Within these articles they have created a socially constructed stereotype of immigrants – such stereotypes help the audience replicate these images into real life through the use of overt racism distorted and exaggerated language, stories, and images; thus, creating a fragmentation where immigrants are seen as a group confined by being viewed as a social threat. Stuart Hall’s essay ‘The White of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media’ he draws attention to the mass media being the pioneers in creating ideological dissemination by publishing representations of immigrants via these images and stereotypes; “the media are peculiarly central to the matter since they are, by definition, part of the dominant means of ideological production” (Stuart Hall. The White of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media; page 19). Hall also added the belief that under these ideologies, our understandings are realised, “we have to ‘speak through’ the ideologies which are active in society and which provide us with the means of ‘making sense’ of social relations and our place in them” (Stuart Hall. The White of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media; page 19) – thus these ideologies settle in society, soon becoming common sense and a new social norm. These articles however, forget to highlight the untold stories of immigrants such as Britain’s legal duty under the UN convention to provide safety and protect incoming refugees, even so, according to FullFact.com fewer EU citizens are immigrating to the UK, and more are emigrating – during 2017 the number of EU national immigrants in the UK fell from 284,000 to 223,000, “Fewer EU citizens are coming to the UK, and the number leaving the UK has risen” (Office for National Statistics). The media also choose to bypass the facts that immigrants initially helped to combat the shortage in workers due to the increase in emigration and demand for labour during the time of the industrial revolution and resulting economic booms the country experienced. Still, the media stories still concentrate on the false claims that immigrants take away our homes, our jobs and crowd our country. Immigration is high on every media outlet focus, all stressing about how immigrants have access to public services such as NHS, housing and social benefits and thus ‘draining’ and ‘taking them away’ from nationals, but are these stories true? No evidence has been found for the reducing quality of healthcare or migrants having preferential access to social housing (FullFact.com), along with migrants being unable to access public funding; but yet, the media simply refuses to mention this, continuing to falsely accuse them of being scroungers. In fact, FullFact.com states that “the overall economic impacts are (still) small” and even highlight that “there’s no overall evidence that EEA immigration has reduced work opportunities for UK-born people” – this shows that stories suggesting our public services and jobs are being ‘drained” are false and a way to further criminalise immigrants while giving little regard and information on the inequality, discrimination and criminalisation immigrants endure within our society.
As a result of all these false immigrant stories and stereotypes, it creates a heavy division between nationals and immigrants. Tension between the two groups is heavily present, separating those who call for immigration to be ended and those who support the process of migrants. In addition, this tension results in the tricky situation put upon the government, who have to decide on which belief to act upon – whether to counter or appease. Due to this, the British immigration policy is ever changing, the race relation legislation or immigration law forever morphing to adhere to the beliefs of those in authority and not to the needs and protection of migrants. However, as Law states “the most common news stereotype about migrant is that immigration policy is ‘out of control’ with an overwhelming focus on the uncontrolled movement of illegal immigrants” (Racism and Ethnicity (2010); page 202), but the initial complexity of this issue is that no one piece of statistical evidence confirms this, only suggesting the need for these migrants as they stereotypically are linked to accepting low-wage jobs, thus taking the jobs we deemed as unwanted. Yet, if we admit to wanting these immigrants, why are they shunned from society when they don’t reject their previous native culture – to be socially accepted an immigrant must be fluent in English, celebrate national holidays and partake in traditionally ‘British’ culture.
In conclusion, the relation between the media and immigrants have always been strained and contradictory. The media has always presented itself as the enemy towards immigrants and minorities, representing their enforcement of the social hierarchy and stereotypical image they have created. Consistently, the media have identified immigrants as a fake criminal, problem and threat while being associated with violence, crime, culturally inferior, and a nuisance to the social norm. The media have created a resistance to immigrants, excluding and placing them into false and exaggerated stereotype to make sure they are seen by society as non-belonging in our society – de-humanised and stripped of all historical context just to create a new moral panic and false crisis. Many forget that majority of immigrants did not choose to be forced to move from their country – having to do so for the protection of themselves or their families due to either economic or political reasons that arise before deciding to escape and seek protection within a different country. I believe the most common misconception of immigrants is the so-called threat to our culture, but why aren’t we celebrating this new multi-culture country we can create? Britain is becoming this great collection of a wide variety of all different ethnicities, cultures and traditions that can all be shared and celebrated throughout the country if we, as a society, all reject the created social norm of alienating migrants.