Website Media & Migration in the Digital Era: Representations, Practices & Reception

 Digital Migration Website publishes research findings of project MEDIA.Crisis along with general project information on research objectives, partners and publications. 

New Journal Article: The “Refugee Crisis” as a Eurocentric Media Construct: An Exploratory Analysis of Pro-Migrant Media Representations in the Guardian and the New York Times

tripleC 18 (1): 478-493, 2020 http://www.triple-c.at

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v18i1.1080

The “Refugee Crisis” as a Eurocentric Media Construct: An Exploratory Analysis of Pro-Migrant Media Representations in the Guardian and the New York Times

Maria Avraamidou

University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus, mariaavraamidou@gmail.com

Abstract: This article presents a critical analysis of how two elite media publications in the United States and the United Kingdom, the New York Times and the Guardian/Observer re-spectively, represented the so-called European refugee crisis in their editorials. The study fore-grounds a media aporia of why Europe did not abide with human rights and democratic values vis-à-vis the refugee drama and a subsequent nostalgia for a European past of democracy and transnational unity that never really existed. These media representations, although sym-pathetic towards migrants, are inherently Eurocentric, helping to reproduce the existing repres-sive global migration regime because they do not see the crisis as a continuation of its coloni-ality but as a rupture.

Keywords: international media, refugee crisis, migration, Eurocentrism, qualitative media analysis

Acknowledgement: This work was supported by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation, Grant Agreement: POST-DOC/0916/0115.

New Paper: Media and Dialogicality-Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour

Blocking the solution: Social representations of threats and (non)dialogue with alternative representations in Greek‐Cypriot newspapers during peace negotiations

The content sharing link for this article is https://rdcu.be/bDUQE

Maria Avraamidou

Charis Psaltis 

Abstract

This paper first identifies representations of threats in Greek‐Cypriot newspapers related to the negotiations for a Cyprus settlement. Then, it identifies how alternative representations to these core representations of threats are managed through the use of a number of semantic barriers. Therefore, it problematizes the role (function) that such representations of threats play in undermining the potential for transformative dialogue in a post‐conflict and divided country in need of conflict transformation. Focus is on the editorials of two newspapers during a four‐month period before the collapse of the July 2017 Cyprus peace talks. Both were suspicious and polemic vis‐à‐vis the said negotiations but used different strategies to oppose them. Simerini convened recurrently threats such as Turkification, state dissolution and threats against Hellenism. Phileleftheros focused on the issue of security drawing red lines on various dossiers under discussion in the negotiations. The paper contributes to the theoretical debate of the relationship between social representations and identities and the role of threats and historical narratives in undermining transformative dialogue through the use of semantic barriers.

Citation: Avraamidou, M, Psaltis, C. Blocking the solution: Social representations of threats and (non)dialogue with alternative representations in Greek‐Cypriot newspapers during peace negotiations. J Theory Soc Behav.2019; 1– 20. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12222

New Report: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender content in Greek-Cypriot newspapers: A descriptive analysis between 2011 and 2015.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender content in Greek-Cypriot
newspapers: A descriptive analysis between 2011 and 2015. Available here

New Article in National Identities

Maria Avraamidou (2017) Exploring Greek-Cypriot media representations of national identities in ethnically divided Cyprus: the case of the 2002/2004 Annan Plan negotiations. National Identities, P. 1-23 | Published online: 17 Apr 2017

• This paper explores Greek-Cypriot media representations of national identities during negotiations on a United Nation Plan (the Annan Plan), aiming to reunite ethnically divided Cyprus under a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. The study analyzed thematically 57 editorials and lead commentaries published in all the daily Greek-Cypriot Press from the presentation of the Annan Plan in November 2002 to April 2004, at which point two simultaneous referenda were held. The study’s findings are consistent with ideas that national identifications are not static and provides an in-depth exploration of exclusive forms of Cypriot identities vis-à-vis more inclusive forms and vis-à-vis hellenocentric identifications.

Available here

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Journal Publication Media Nationalism and the Negotiation of Inter-Ethnic Peace in Cyprus

Media Nationalism and the Negotiation of Inter-Ethnic Peace in Cyprus 

Maria Avraamidou and Christopher Kyriakides 

Interesting Postcolonial blog here 'Paul Daley on Australia's national identity and place in the world' theGuardian

Mini Conference on Borders and Communication of Postcolonial Communication Project Team at the Cyprus University of Technology

For the full invitation and details on the presentations visit our facebook page here: facebook group

Also information available here

Speakers:

Rodolfo Torres, University of California-Irvine "US-Mexico Border"
Nicos Trimikliniotis, University of Nicosia "Southern European Border"
Christopher Kyriakides, Cyprus University of Technology  "Borders in Cyberspace"
Maria Avraamidou, Cyprus University of Technology "Media, Ethnic Conflict, Cyprus"

Discussion Chair: Dr Olga Demetriou, PRIO&University of Cyprus

The mini conference is co-funded by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). 

EUROPEAN UNION

Postcolonial Communication Project Preliminary Results presented at the SSPC 2014 Conference in Oporto, Portugal

Preliminary Results of the Postcolonial Communication Project were presented at the 2014 Summer Conference of the  Biannual International Conference for Social Sciences Debate (July 17-20, 2014) in Oporto. The presentation's main aim was to present preliminary findings of a qualitative study exploring Greek-Cypriots’ perceptions on the re-unification of ethnically divided Cyprus taking as a starting point the negotiations and the referenda on a UN Annan Plan (the plan), the only settlement proposed for Cyprus reunification. The plan was rejected in April 2004 during two simultaneous referenda by 73, 58% of Greek-Cypriots and was accepted by 64, 91% of the Turkish-Cypriots. Rejection by one community meant that the plan was void. The referenda results initially prompted homogenizing accounts regarding what the two communities expect in relation to the solution. The presentation's focus was on participants' perceptions on the role of the media during the Annan Period.

Partha Chatterjee on Subaltern Studies, Marxism and Vivek Chibber

Interesting debate

Partha Chatterjee on Subaltern Studies, Marxism and Vivek Chibber

Preliminary Results of postcolonial communication project to be presented at Manchester conference, May 2013

CONFERENCE:  "Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism in European Media and Film: Rights, Responsibilities, Representations"

International Conference, The University of Manchester, UK
23-25 May 2013

For more information including the draft programme please follow this link

‘Race’, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies (REPS) PhD symposium

‘Race’, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies (REPS) PhD symposium
London Metropolitan University

6-7 June 2013

link to the event

The Second Havana Declaration-full text

The full text of the Second Declaration of Havana of 4 February 1962 can be found here. Robert Young (2001:p.216) argues that the declaration is also about a transformation of power relations, a reversal in which the dispossessed of the earth have begun to seize power and write their own history. This is of central importance for postcolonial theory and theorists who advocate for social transformation. Some extracts of the declaration follow:

Yes, now history will have to take the poor of America into account, the exploited and spurned of Latin America, who have decided to begin writing history for themselves for all time. Already they can be seen on the roads, on foot, day after day, in endless marches of hundreds of kilometers to the governmental "eminences," to obtain their rights.

Already they can be seen armed with stones, sticks, machetes, in one direction and another, each day, occupying lands, sinking hooks into the land which belongs to them and defending it with their lives. They can be seen carrying signs, slogans, flags; letting them flap in the mountain or prairie winds. And the wave of anger, of demands for justice, of claims for rights, which is beginning to sweep the lands of Latin America, will not stop. That wave will swell with every passing day. For that wave is composed of the greatest number, the majorities in every respect, those whose labor amasses the wealth and turns the wheels of history. Now, they are awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been subjected.

What is a nation?

The famous lecture delivered by Ernest Renan at the Sorbonne, 11 March 1882 'Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?' can be found translated in English in the book Nation and Narration which is edited by Homi K. Bhabha. Some abstracts from the lecture follow:

Nations, in this sense of the term, are something fairly new in history. Antiquity was unfamiliar with them; Egypt, China and ancient Chaldea were in no way nations-No nation traces its origins back to Alexander the Great’s momentous adventure, fertile though it was in consequences for the general history of civilization.

p. 11 Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical, error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of] nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence which took place at the origin of all political formations, even of those whose consequences have been altogether beneficial. Unity is always effected by means of brutality; the union of northern France with the Midid was the result of massacres and terror lastng for the best part of a century.

Yet the essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things. FNo French citizen knows whether he is a Burgundian and Alan, a Taifale, or a Visigoth, yet every French citizen has to have forgotten the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, or the massacres that took place in the Midi in the 13^th century.

The modern nation is therefore a historical result brought about by a series of convergent facts. Sometimes unity has been effected by a dynasty, as was the case in France; sometimes it has been brought about by the direct will of provinces, as was the case with Holland, Switzerland, and Belgium; sometimes it has been the work of a general consciousness, belatedly victorious over the caprices of feudalism, as was the case in Italy and Germany.

Daily Phileleftheros Online Archive

The daily O Phileleftheros provides online information on core events related to the Cyprus Issue (sth like a timeline of the negotiations etc).  Not bad when one needs to know or refer to exact dates. For example it contains the outcome and the dates of the meetings of the National Council (Ethniko Simvoulio).

Ένα μεγάλο μέρος του αρχείου εφημερίδων (από το 1878) έχει ψηφιοποιηθεί και βρίσκεται στο Παττίχειο Δημοτικό Μουσείο, Ιστορικό Αρχείο και Κέντρο Μελετών Λεμεσού στην πρώην Οικία Έπαρχου (Δημοτικός Κήπος).

Η πρόσβαση στο αρχείο γίνεται δωρεάν. Λειτουργεί από το πρωί μέχρι το απόγευμα (διάλειμμα 13:00-14:00). Πολύ βοηθητικό για ερευνητές/τριες, φοιτητές/τριες και όχι μόνο! Περισσότερες πληροφορίες εδώ.

Can the Subaltern speak-Full text

Nationalim by Craig Calhoun has an interesting chapter on Imperialism, Colonialism, and the World-System of Nation-states arguing that nationalism was commonly a project of groups linked to the colonial state and to vested interests in the colonial economy. The link above will take you to the said chapter.