NGOs’ Advocacy in the 2015 Refugee Crisis: A Study of Agenda Building in the Digital Age

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimei Yang ◽  
Adam Saffer

In the 2015 European refugee crisis, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) offered help and actively advocated for millions of refugees. The current study aims to understand what communication strategies are most effective for NGOs to influence media coverage and the public’s social media conversations about refugees. We found that agenda building on traditional media and in social media conversations require different strategies. Specifically, although providing information subsidies could powerfully influence traditional media coverage, its effect waned in the context of social media conversations. In contrast, NGOs’ hyperlink network positions emerged as the one of the influential factors for NGOs’ prominence in social media conversations. Moreover, stakeholder-initiated engagement could influence agenda building both in traditional media coverage and social media conversations. Finally, organizational resources and characteristics are important factors as well. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511878563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ju-Sung Lee ◽  
Adina Nerghes

In recent years, increasing attention has been dedicated to the hazardous and volatile situation in the Middle East, a crisis which has pushed many to flee their countries and seek refuge in neighboring countries or in Europe. In describing or discussing these tragic events, labels such as “European migrant crisis” and “European refugee crisis” started being widely used by the media, politicians, and the online world alike. The use of such labels has the potential to dictate the ways in which displaced people are received and perceived. With this study, we investigate label use in social media (specifically YouTube), the emergent patterns of labeling that can cause further disaffection and tension or elicit sympathy, and the sentiments associated with the different labels. Our findings suggest that migration issues are being framed not only through labels characterizing the crisis but also by their describing the individuals themselves. Using topic modeling and sentiment analysis jointly, our study offers valuable insights into the direction of public sentiment and the nature of discussions surrounding this significant societal crisis, as well as the nature of online opinion sharing. We conclude by proposing a four-dimensional model of label interpretation in relation to sentiment—that accounts for perceived agency, economic cost, permanence, and threat, and identifies threat and agency to be most impactful. This perspective reveals important influential aspects of labels and frames that may shape online public opinion and alter attitudes toward those directly affected by the crisis.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Muhammad Mainuddin Patwary ◽  
Mondira Bardhan ◽  
Matthew H. E. M. Browning ◽  
Asma Safia Disha ◽  
Md. Zahidul Haque ◽  
...  

Unverified information concerning COVID-19 can affect mental health. Understanding perceived trust in information sources and associated mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic is vital to ensure ongoing media coverage of the crisis does not exacerbate mental health impacts. A number of studies have been conducted in other parts of the world to determine associations between information exposure relating to COVID-19 and mental health. However, the mechanism by which trust in information sources may affect mental health is not fully explained in the developing country context. To address this issue, the present study examined associations between perceived trust in three sources of information concerning COVID-19 and anxiety/stress with the mediating effects of COVID-19 stress in Bangladesh. An online cross-sectional study was conducted with 744 Bangladeshi adults between 17 April and 1 May 2020. Perceived trust in traditional, social, and health media for COVID-19 information, demographics, frontline service status, COVID-19-related stressors, anxiety (GAD-7), and stress (PSS-4) were assessed via self-report. Linear regression tested for associations between perceived trust and mental health. Mediation analyses investigated whether COVID-19-related stressors affected perceived trust and mental health associations. In fully adjusted models, more trust in social media was associated with more anxiety (B = 0.03, CI = 0.27–0.97) and stress (B = 0.01, CI = −0.34–0.47), while more trust in traditional media was associated with more anxiety (B = 0.09, CI = 0.17–2.26) but less stress (B = −0.08, CI = −0.89–0.03). Mediation analyses showed that COVID-19-related stressors partially explained associations between perceived trust and anxiety. These findings suggest that trusting social media to provide accurate COVID-19 information may exacerbate poor mental health. These findings also indicate that trusting traditional media (i.e., television, radio, and the newspaper) may have stress-buffering effects. We recommend that responsible authorities call attention to concerns about the trustworthiness of social media as well as broadcast positive and authentic news in traditional media outcomes based on these results.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Yantseva

This study undertakes a systematic analysis of media discourse on migration in Sweden from 2012 to 2019. Using a novel data set consisting of mainstream newspapers, Twitter and forum data, the study answers two questions: What do Swedish media actually talk about when they talk about “migration”? And how do they talk about it? Using a combination of computational text analysis tools, I analyze a shift in the media discourse seen as one of the outcomes of the European refugee crisis in 2015 and try to understand the role of social media in this process. The results of the study indicate that messages on social media generally had negative tonality and suggest that some of the media frames can be attributed to a migration-hostile discourse. At the same time, the analysis of framing and sentiment dynamics provides little evidence for the discourse shift and any long-term effects of the European refugee crisis on the Swedish media discourse. Rather, one can hypothesize that the role of the crisis should be viewed in a broader political and historical context.


SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402092551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kashmala Latif ◽  
Muhammad Yousaf Malik ◽  
Abdul Hameed Pitafi ◽  
Shamsa Kanwal ◽  
Zara Latif

This study aims to examine the role of exposure to travel-related content posted by friends on Facebook in triggering the intention to visit a tourist destination (IVTD). The study further examines how travel-related content exposure is linked with IVTD, and why some travel consumers, unlike others, tend to trigger more IVTD in response to travel-related content exposure. The sample of the present study included 295 travel consumers who are users of Facebook in Pakistan. The hypothesized model is tested using PROCESS macros in SPSS 24.0. The findings of the study reveal that travel-related content exposure is positively associated with IVTD. The benign envy mediates the relationship between exposure to travel-related content posted by friends on Facebook and IVTD, but the online social identity moderated the relationship between exposure to travel-related content posted by friends on Facebook and IVTD such that high online social identity strengthened the impact of travel-related content exposure on IVTD, thus highlighting the pivotal role of online social identity in the comparison process. The study contributes to the tourism literature on social media and has practical implications for social media travel managers and advertisers. The travel managers and advertisers should develop marketing and communication strategies considering friends’ communications on Facebook as a factor that can influence travel consumers’ behavior and decision making.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young Joon Lim ◽  
Jennifer Lemanski

This study examined recent virality of “Ok Boomer” in the United States. The term of Ok Boomer gained overnight momentum in the public sphere as the symbol of a generational war. While previous research has primarily examined racial and gender tensions, this study introduced a new phenomenon of the generational conflict between “Ok Boomers” and “Baby Boomers,” in which social media originated the term of Ok Boomer and traditional media diffused it with framed meaning. Diffusion of Innovation theory was used to better understand the path of how “Ok Boomer” as a catchphrase, hashtag, noun cluster or trend resulted in attracting a massive amount of media and public attention. Relying on Node XL, Google Trends, and Nexus Nexis for data gathering and analyses, this study categorized four themes for a word, or an idea as an innovation to be publicly acknowledged: collaboration of social media and traditional media, public figures’ involvement for debate; confrontational social issues, and media-framed agenda. In sum, this study argues the term of Ok Boomer symbolizes the advent of a generational war in society in line with the long-standing race and gender wars in the media coverage.


2022 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Paatelainen ◽  
Elisa Kannasto ◽  
Pekka Isotalus

Political campaign communication has become increasingly hybrid and the ability to create synergies between older and newer media is now a prerequisite for running a successful campaign. Nevertheless, beyond establishing that parties and individual politicians use social media to gain visibility in traditional media, not much is known about how political actors use the hybrid media system in their campaign communication. At the same time, the personalization of politics, shown to have increased in the media coverage of politics, has gained little attention in the context of today’s hybrid media environment. In this research we analyze one aspect of hybrid media campaign communication, political actors’ use of traditional media in their social media campaign communication. Through a quantitative content analysis of the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts of Finnish parties and their leaders published during the 2019 Finnish parliamentary elections, we find that much of this hybridized campaign communication was personalized. In addition, we show that parties and their leaders used traditional media for multiple purposes, the most common of which was gaining positive visibility, pointing to strategic considerations. The results have implications for both the scholarship on hybrid media systems and personalization of politics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adina Nerghes ◽  
Ju-Sung Lee

The European refugee crisis received heightened attention at the beginning of September 2015, when images of the drowned child, Aylan Kurdi, surfaced across mainstream and social media. While the flows of displaced persons, especially from the Middle East into Europe, had been ongoing until that date, this event and its coverage sparked a media firestorm. Mainstream-media content plays a major role in shaping discourse about events such as the refugee crisis, while social media’s participatory affordances allow for the narratives to be perpetuated, challenged, and injected with new perspectives. In this study, the perspectives and narratives of the refugee crisis from the mainstream news and Twitter—in the days following Aylan’s death—are compared and contrasted. Themes are extracted through topic modeling (LDA) and reveal how news and Twitter converge and also diverge. We show that in the initial stages of a crisis and following the tragic death of Aylan, public discussion on Twitter was highly positive. Unlike the mainstream-media, Twitter offered an alternative and multifaceted narrative, not bound by geo-politics, raising awareness and calling for solidarity and empathy towards those affected. This study demonstrates how mainstream and social media form a new and complementary media space, where narratives are created and transformed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (12) ◽  
pp. 17-19

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings Organizations should utilize social media platforms like Twitter to communicate effectively with stakeholders impacted in the wake of a preventable corporate crisis. It is critical to deploy relevant communication strategies in order to repair relations and minimize damage caused to the reputation and legitimacy of the firm. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.


2020 ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Ilan Kapoor

This chapter focuses on two recent controversies in which Slavoj Žižek has been embroiled — the European refugee crisis and the issue of Eurocentrism — to illustrate the two universalist dimensions of antagonism. The two controversies are, of course, directly pertinent to international development, since the one (the refugee crisis) is closely entwined with North–South relations and the global politics of inequality, while the other (Eurocentrism) is a key cause of concern for those (postcolonial, decolonial) development theorists and practitioners focusing on continuing patterns of Western domination. Žižek's stand on both issues has been the subject of notable disapproval, if not denunciation. Critics reproach him for being Eurocentric and even racist, charges which he has repeatedly countered. The chapter examines the differing theoretical and political positions in these debates, underlining what Žižek's critics miss or misunderstand about the key notion of antagonism.


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