[ Music ]
>> Hello, everybody.
My name is Alexander Prankovich, and I'm professor
of the Ukrainian Catholic University in the city of Lviv, Ukraine.
And we have a wonderful speaker today.
Her name is Alina Mozelevska.
And she is a professor of the Petromi Hill
of Black Sea National University in the city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
And she will tell us about media representations of migrations.
Alina, I give the floor to you.
>> Hello. Thank you for this nice introduction.
And during the short video, I will answer three questions.
Why it is important to study media representations of migration?
The second question, how new media
changes the way migration is represented?
And the last question, what are the main
tools of representation of migration?
The first question is why.
According to the recent reports, there is more than 120 million
of forcibly displaced people and more
than 42 million of refugees worldwide.
Among them, 6.8 Ukrainian refugees registered in the world.
So these waves of migration are caused by different reasons.
But this is a part of our present life.
And this issue is widely framed and
communicated via different channels.
Political communication, media arts, and other means of representation.
And to understand how political agendas
and social ethical agenda are shaped,
we need to study the main mechanism of representation
of migration and displacement in media.
So the second question is how in contemporary conditions
of digital media, representation of migration
are challenged or shaped by new media.
So first thing that we need to take into consideration,
the performative aspect and aesthetic aspect of new media.
A lot of attention is drawn to the visual representation
of migration and to the construction of visual narratives of migration.
For example, the focus on spectatorship,
emotional, affective appeal to the public,
and generation of emotions such as compassion,
empathy, or vice versa, hatred or disgust.
So when we study social media,
we need first of all pay attention to this.
How visually the representation is constructed.
Another important aspect is the use of social media
and mobile phones, technologies in general,
migrants themselves, refugees themselves.
And the new possibilities of the recording
of difficult journeys of stories of adaptation,
of stories of integration into the
host societies by migrants themselves.
So when we study digital media representations,
we need also to pay attention to the self-representation
and deliberative aspect of new media and digital technologies.
I hope that we will have time to talk
more about this in following MOOCs.
And last question is what are the main tools of the representation?
So a lot of scholars pay attention to this
and analyze the mechanism of the representation.
For example, such strategies as dehumanization,
massification, the representation of
agency or vice versa, lack of agency
or weaponization of certain patterns and narratives.
I would like you to discuss together with
me one short example of political use
of visual media representation of refugees.
I hope that in one minute you will see the
photograph that I want to use in this MOOC.
So this is the photo of Jeff Mitchell, originally taken in Slovenia
in the wake of refugee crisis in 2015.
And as Jeff Mitchell said himself,
his aim was to document the difficulties
of the journey of migrants towards the host communities.
But very soon this image was highly
politicized and used in other contexts.
And I will give you only few examples of the use.
For example, the very same image was used
by UKIP Brexit company campaigning in
the UK, generating fear of the other.
And the same, very same image was used
to criminalize migration in French context.
It was used by a politician Eric
Zamour during last campaigning in 2022.
So we see that one image taken with the aim to document migration story
was highly used to generate negative emotions towards the other.
And this is only one example,
how can one image be used in different contexts.
And we can also mention, for example,
another aspect or another patterns of representation,
for example, using this massive image focusing on ethnic peculiarities,
using aspects of differences to create distance.
But also there are other tendencies that create empathy,
focusing, for example, on other profiles of
migrants as unaccompanied children or women.
And this way, other political campaigning
or media campaigning try to use images
to create more sympathy or empathy.
I think this is all.
If you would like to learn more, I think we'll provide you more sources
to study this later within MOOC course.
Thank you very much for your attention.
- Thank you, Alina, for your wonderful presentation.
And I wish you all the best in your research.
- Thank you.