Racist representations of refugees/immigrants on newspaper websites in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic
The present study examines the ways in which refugees and migrants are represented in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic on websites of widely circulated Greek newspapers. It is a fact that the media reproduces racist stereotypes and prejudices against minority groups, while at the same time creating a sense of fear to the people reading the news (Van Dijk, 1989). That sense derives from the fact that refugees and migrants pose a threat to nation-states, such as Greece, as they threaten to shatter the imaginary ideal of national homogeneity. This threat is intensifying in today’s Greece, through the resurgence of a racist discourse concerning refugees and migrants under the potential danger of transmitting the new coronavirus. For the purposes of this study, a corpus of articles was collected and analyzed from the websites of the newspapers “TA NEA”, “I EFIMERIDA TON SYNAKTON” and “I AVGI”. The articles collected were written when the first cases of coronavirus were detected at the Moria’s Reception and Identification Center, on the island of Lesvos. The narrative articles were analyzed using Labov’s (1972) narrative analysis model, in order to showcase the ways refugees and migrants are represented during the pandemic. Therefore, the findings of the research indicate that these minority groups are represented mainly in a negative manner, thus reinforcing the image of the dangerous Other who creates problems in Greece not only because it may transmit the coronavirus but also because it acts in violent manner.