“This is a boiling pot ready to explode”: Anti-immigrant discourse in British and Czech news discussion forums
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | The increased mobility of people within the EU over the past few years has been accompanied by the rise of antiimmigrant discourse in many of the countries affected. While the negative presentation of out-groups in the media and in the speech of elite social actors (such as politicians) has been well documented in many studies, relatively less attention has been paid to the discourse of ‘common people’, particularly from a comparative perspective. Based on an analysis of news articles and online discussion forums dealing with the coverage of the situation of recent economic immigrants to the UK, the presentation documents how Eastern European Roma are negatively presented in the media and to what prejudicial talk they are subject in reader’s discussion forums. Data from several British online news sites are contrasted with similar data from comparable Czech sites. The qualitative analysis reveals that while some British readers add critical self-reflection to the debates, such balance of opinion is missing from the Czech data. It also appears that the issue triggers different topics for further discussion: some British readers redefine the situation as caused by the EU and, consequently, the UK is presented as a victim of EU’s policies. Similar conceptualizations are entirely missing from the Czech data. By contrast, Czech readers interpret the new experience of the British people as essentially confirming their own pre-existing anti-Roma sentiments. It is argued that the different discourses stem from different local situations, with the current Czech discourse reflecting a peculiar form of prejudicial thinking that developed in the late 1990s as a result of the first Roma-related problems which, despite being local, had an international dimension because of the country’s entry into the EU in 2004. |