IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v10y2022i2p287-300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Migrants as “Objects of Care”: Immigration Coverage in Russian Media During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Svetlana S. Bodrunova

    (School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St. Petersburg State University, Russia)

  • Anna Smoliarova

    (School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St. Petersburg State University, Russia)

Abstract

For over 20 years, Russia has been within the top five most attractive countries for immigrants. Before the pandemic, the federal policies that stimulated the immigration of cheap workforce contradicted the public perception and the media coverage of immigrants as problematic communities. Unlike labor immigrants, the EU refugees from the Middle East were depicted as a challenge for the disunited and unhospitable EU, and re-settlers from Donbass were portrayed highly sympathetically. These differences remain virtually unstudied. We explore the coverage of immigrants and refugees in Russia during the Covid-19 pandemic to see whether, under its impact, the coverage was equal and humanistic rather than different and politically induced. Based on content analysis of 12 Russian federal and regional textual media and four TV channels in 2020, we show that the differences described above have persisted and even intensified during the pandemic, supported by pro-state media, with only marginal counterbalancing from oppositional news outlets. The discourse about labor immigrants pragmatically focused on immigration-related problems for businesses and the state, channeling the authorities’ position on immigrants as “objects of proper care,” while the EU refugees were depicted as “objects of improper treatment.” In both discourses, immigrants were equally deprived of their subjectivity. In general, the immigration-related issues were not a major focus, especially for regional media, and the pandemic has not led to the re-humanization of immigration coverage.

Suggested Citation

  • Svetlana S. Bodrunova & Anna Smoliarova, 2022. "Migrants as “Objects of Care”: Immigration Coverage in Russian Media During the Covid-19 Pandemic," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 287-300.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:2:p:287-300
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v10i2.5213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/5213
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v10i2.5213?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Svetlana S. Bodrunova & Ivan Blekanov & Anna Smoliarova & Anna Litvinenko, 2019. "Beyond Left and Right: Real-World Political Polarization in Twitter Discussions on Inter-Ethnic Conflicts," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(3), pages 119-132.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Svetlana S. Bodrunova & Andrey V. Orekhov & Ivan S. Blekanov & Nikolay S. Lyudkevich & Nikita A. Tarasov, 2020. "Topic Detection Based on Sentence Embeddings and Agglomerative Clustering with Markov Moment," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-17, August.
    2. Iandoli, Luca & Primario, Simonetta & Zollo, Giuseppe, 2021. "The impact of group polarization on the quality of online debate in social media: A systematic literature review," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    3. Svetlana S. Bodrunova & Anna Litvinenko & Ivan Blekanov & Dmitry Nepiyushchikh, 2021. "Constructive Aggression? Multiple Roles of Aggressive Content in Political Discourse on Russian YouTube," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(1), pages 181-194.
    4. Svetlana S. Bodrunova & Anna Litvinenko & Ivan Blekanov & Dmitry Nepiyushchikh, 2021. "Constructive Aggression? Multiple Roles of Aggressive Content in Political Discourse on Russian YouTube," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(1), pages 181-194.
    5. Olessia Koltsova & Svetlana S. Bodrunova, 2019. "Public Discussion in Russian Social Media: An Introduction," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(3), pages 114-118.
    6. Olessia Koltsova & Svetlana S. Bodrunova, 2019. "Public Discussion in Russian Social Media: An Introduction," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(3), pages 114-118.
    7. Arora, Swapan Deep & Singh, Guninder Pal & Chakraborty, Anirban & Maity, Moutusy, 2022. "Polarization and social media: A systematic review and research agenda," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    8. Svetlana S. Bodrunova, 2022. "Editorial for the Special Issue “Selected Papers from the 9th Annual Conference ‘Comparative Media Studies in Today’s World’ (CMSTW’2021)”," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-3, November.
    9. Ivan Blekanov & Svetlana S. Bodrunova & Askar Akhmetov, 2021. "Detection of Hidden Communities in Twitter Discussions of Varying Volumes," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-17, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:2:p:287-300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.