“Hapless Victims” or “Making Trouble”: Audience Responses to Stereotypical Representations of Asylum Seekers in Australian News Discourse

ABSTRACT

Despite its long history of resettling refugees, Australia's acceptance of asylum seekers continues to attract considerable debate and division. This is exacerbated by news coverage that constructs people seeking asylum along a “threat” versus “victim” binary. As most Australians lack direct experience with people from asylum seeking backgrounds, media discourse plays a pivotal role in societal understandings of the issue. This paper discusses research combining Critical Discourse Analysis with a cultural studies Audience Reception epistemology to examine how 24 Western Australians respond to news representations of asylum seekers. Participants drew upon their own perspectives when discussing Australian coverage, highlighting the importance of accounting for audiences' ideological positioning when examining their perspectives on news discourse. While some accepted dominant constructions of asylum seekers as a “threat” and argued that the “victim” narrative is emotionally manipulative, others rejected both tropes, positing that the former legitimises asylum seekers' exclusion while the latter portrays them as deficient and agentless. These findings are discussed with consideration of their implications - in both a practice and scholarly context—demonstrating the value of applying critical discourse methods in audience reception research.

KEYWORDS:

• Asylum seekers
• news
• media
• Australia
• CriticalDiscourse Analysis
• audiences

Introduction

Through extensive media coverage of global crises, publics are increasingly exposed to distant human suffering. The expected audience response is one of compassion, which is often treated as a reaction to the undeserved suffering of innocent victims (Nussbaum 2001). Mediated constructions of suffering therefore have the power to socially define worthy versus unworthy objects of compassion (Höijer 2004). These representations have attracted much scholarly criticism, often based on their propensity to create a “spectatorship of suffering” (Chouliaraki 2006), while contributing to the visual and/or discursive dehumanisation of distant “others” (Georgiou and Zaborowski 2017; Hodge 2015). Thomas (2011) argues that such depictions derive from journalism's strong adherence to the principles of “objectivity”, where human suffering becomes commodified as “human interest”. In Australia, we routinely see this at play in media depictions of people seeking asylum.

Each year, Australia resettles approximately 16,250 refugees through the Government's Humanitarian Program (Department of Home Affairs 2020), however, the nation remains highly polarised about its policies for offering protection under this program (Higgins 2017). As most of the general public lack direct contact with asylum seekers, the news is a critical source of information about the issue (Muller 2016). For instance, epithets such as “invaders” conjure up ideas of asylum seekers as threats to the host nation (Lynn and Lea 2003). Such labels can diminish empathy and understanding among the wider society, legitimising harsh policy responses that adversely affect asylum seekers' wellbeing (Higgins 2016). In Australia, asylum seekers who arrive without a valid visa face prolonged periods of detention in both mainland and offshore facilities, and those living within the community are subjected to stringent visa conditions that substantially restrict their working rights and subsequent capacity to provide for themselves and their families. There is some evidence to suggest that those who support exclusionary policies are more inclined to accept and reproduce discursive constructions of asylum seekers as a “threat” (Haw 2018; Hartley and Pedersen 2007).

Indeed, investigations into Australian news content indicates that asylum seekers have been routinely presented as unwelcome threats to society (Ellis, Fulton, and Scott 2016; Klocker and Dunn 2003; Lueck, Due, and Augoustinos 2015). However, while some scholars have explored audience responses (e.g., McKay, Thomas, and Blood 2011; Mummery and Rodan 2007; Philo, Briant, and Donald 2013), scholarship in this area remains scarce. Addressing this gap can reveal important nuances in how societies evaluate media discourse surrounding asylum seekers while accounting for personal views and experiences. As van Dijk (1995) writes:

Not only does the public have some freedom in participating in the use of media messages, it may also not “change its mind” along the lines desired by the more powerful. Rejection, disbelief, criticism, or other forms of resistance or challenge may be involved and thus signal modes of counter-power (13).

This article takes this resistance and subjects it to careful analysis. It discusses the findings arising from interviews with 24 Western Australians who provided their perspectives surrounding news depictions of asylum seekers. An interesting discursive feature of these discussions was how participants used their critiques of media to legitimise their own position on people seeking asylum. This was observed in response to two dominant discourses: (1) asylum seekers as “threats” and/or “troublemakers” and (2) asylum seekers as “victims”. How participants resisted these two narratives seemed to depend upon their own asylum views. While those who expressed anti-asylum sentiments tended to accept dominant framings of asylum seekers as “threats”, many who voiced welcoming views resisted this narrative. Multiple participants also challenged the “victim” trope, but for varying reasons—while some argued that the victim frame dehumanises asylum seekers by painting them as deficient and agentless, others critiqued it as “emotionally manipulative”. Analysed through a Critical Discourse lens, these findings demonstrate how audiences draw upon pre-existing views to resist dominant media narratives, voicing a range of disparate arguments about asylum seekers. This points to the importance of accounting for audiences' own perspectives when examining their responses to mediated constructions of distant human suffering.

Mediated Constructions of the Asylum Seeker “Other”

Threats and Troublemakers

An insidious feature of mediated constructions of asylum seekers as a distant “other” is the “us versus them” narrative, which sees asylum seekers dehumanised by virtue of their perceived incompatibility with the broader society. This is apparent in news discourse where the “threat” posed by asylum seekers is exaggerated to highlight the need for government and/or community action to protect the moral and civilised “us” from the immoral and uncivilised “them” (Lynch, McGoldrick, and Russell 2012). Australia saw this in action during the 2001 Federal Election when then Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock announced that a group of asylum seekers had thrown their children into the ocean in order to force their way into Australia. The story, which made immediate headlines, sparked then Prime Minister John Howard to declare on national radio “I certainly don't want people of that type in Australia” (Mares 2002). It was revealed following the election that Ruddock's account was inaccurate, however coverage of the incident reinforced public sentiment about the threatening asylum seeker “other” (Slattery 2003; Weller 2002).

Much of the literature concerned with mediated and public constructions of racial minorities show that the non-white “other” is routinely associated with threats to the values, norms, safety, and security of the dominant society (Jacobs 2017; Jacobs et al. 2018; Mastro 2009; van der Linden and Jacobs 2016). These threats are said to fall into three categories: physical, where racialised groups are constructed as being prone to violence, aggression and extremism; economic, where newcomers are depicted as a danger to the dominant group's financial stability; and symbolic, which refers to perceived challenges to the dominant society's broader systems of meaning (e.g., language, cultural practices, religious beliefs/customs) (Atwell Seate and Mastro 2016). Australia has routinely witnessed references to these perceived threats over the past three decades, with research highlighting the “threat” discourse as a pervasive feature of news representations of asylum seekers and migrants (Ellis, Fulton, and Scott 2016; Klocker and Dunn 2003; Parker 2015). For instance, Ellis, Fulton, and Scott (2016) examined newspaper depictions of riots that occurred in 2014 in the Manus Island detention centre, resulting in the death of 24-year-old Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati, finding that The Australian presented asylum seekers as violent and to blame for the incident.

Similar themes have emerged internationally (Báez and Castañeda 2014; Greenslade 2005; Montagut and Moragas-Fernández 2020; Muytjens and Ball 2016; Stewart, Pitts, and Osborne 2011). For example, Philo, Briant, and Donald (2013) observed that the British press typically framed the “threat” discourse—articulated through repeated references to danger and damage caused by asylum seekers—as a problem to control through more punitive policy measures. In the United States, the threat trope is routinely applied to exclusionary discourses about Latinx communities, a phenomenon dubbed the “Latino Threat Narrative”, which holds that Latinos are “unwilling or incapable of integrating, of becoming part of the national community” and in turn, threaten “the American way of life” (Chavez 2013, 3). Researchers have found evidence of this narrative in news coverage surrounding immigration in the US (Báez and Castañeda 2014; Stewart et al. 2011). In Europe, van der Linden and Jacobs (2016) observed that the threat frame influences feelings of anxiety toward racialised “outgroups”, and that these anxieties drive support for stricter immigration policies.

In the asylum seeking context, an issue closely tied to the “threat” narrative is that of asylum seekers partaking in protests to advocate for their own rights. It is common for media organisations to present images of protests, offering a situated gaze (Yuval-Davis 2011). Here, asylum seekers' protesting is often positioned as a form of manipulation. For example, Hoenig’s (2009) analysis of newspaper articles about asylum seekers partaking in hunger strikes and lip-sewing while detained in Woomera Detention Centre revealed that much of the coverage relied upon descriptions of these protests as “unacceptable within our community”. Similarly, Klocker and Dunn (2003) found that coverage of the Woomera protests largely mirrored the narrative contained within government documents that presented asylum seekers as dangerous, thereby emphasising the threat idea rather than acknowledging these acts as calls for help.

Some scholars have argued that by constructing asylum seekers as threats, media organisations engage in a useful discursive strategy for positioning exclusionary asylum policies as necessary for protecting good, law-abiding citizens from the invading “other” (Haynes, Devereux, and Breen 2004). According to framing theory, the media employs a particular interpretational lens when reporting on divisive topics, emphasising particular aspects of an issue while omitting others (De Vreese 2005). Entman (1993) emphasises how journalists and producers construct frames by making certain ideas more salient in a given media text “to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation of the item described” (52). Central to this process is the act of inciting audiences to perceive the issue or event at hand through the lens presented to them (McQuail 2000).

While limited empirical attention has been paid to how members of the public evaluate such depictions, some studies have shed light on this. For example, Hoenig (2011) found that many Woomera community members referenced news coverage of the 2002 protests while arguing that the asylum seekers' actions were a publicity stunt provoked by the presence of the media. Some research, however, has uncovered resistance to these ideas, with audiences pointing out how the “threat” narrative either reinforces unfounded community fears of asylum seekers or invokes a sense of asylum seekers' helplessness (see, for example, Philo, Briant, and Donald 2013). This alludes to the positioning of asylum seekers as passive “victims”, which also represents a dominant theme in the stereotypical “othering” of people seeking asylum.

The “Victim” Versus “Threat” Binary

Despite its widespread use in pro-asylum arguments, the “victim” trope is regarded as a limiting marker that constructs asylum seekers as “speechless emissaries” (Malkki 1996, 390) as opposed to fully-fledged, autonomous individuals (Smets et al. 2019). A notable example is the death of 3-year-old Syrian asylum seeker Aylan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to reach Greece with his family in September 2015. While this incident saw global coverage of the refugee crisis adopt more compassionate framings, asylum seekers were also positioned as agentless and helpless actors (Efe 2019).

Australian coverage has been found to frame asylum seekers along similar themes (Cooper et al. 2017; Hoenig 2009; Parker 2015). While these representations may appear to ideologically oppose the “threat” discourse, they can serve the same “othering” function. For example, Hoenig (2009) found that within news texts focused on asylum seekers' humanitarian needs, they were portrayed as having no agency and were further dehumanised through the exclusion of their perspectives. Similarly, Parker’s (2015) analysis of Australian and UK news coverage revealed that the victim discourse emphasised their deficiency, which, when contrasted with the more “capable” host society, frames asylum seekers as “unwanted” (9). Similar themes have emerged in the UK and Europe (see, e.g., Horsti 2013; Philo, Briant, and Donald 2013; van Gorp 2005). There is also some evidence that the victim narrative is harmful for people from asylum seeking backgrounds. For example, following their interviews with refugees, Smets et al. (2019), reported that many argued that the “victim” discourse invokes connotations of inferiority or incompetence, leading them to feel ashamed of their refugee status.

The framing of human suffering, according to Herman and Chomsky (1988), takes part on a dichotomy where worthy and unworthy victims are pitted against one another. The available literature indicates that asylum seekers are routinely framed as either victims or villains—a social construction that depends on how people perceive their deservingness of compassion (see, for example, Thomann and Rapp 2018). The “good” refugee is able to capitalise on their victimhood by proving their suffering, while the “bad” refugee presents a “threat” to the society with which they seek to join (Moeller 1999; van Gorp 2005). Such a binary has been observed in recent Australian examinations of political and media discourse (Leach 2003; Peterie 2017; Van Acker and Hollander 2003). For instance, Leach’s (2003) analysis of the “children overboard” event revealed that media and political discourse used the incident to pit “deserving” and “undeserving” asylum seekers against one another, with many positioning the incident as evidence of asylum seekers' incompatibility with Australian society. More recently, Peterie’s (2017) analysis of government press statements revealed discourses that situate passive, helpless, and vulnerable asylum seekers as deserving of compassion while constructing more autonomous asylum seekers as the threatening and undeserving “other”. Similar findings have been uncovered in other parts of world, particularly the UK and Europe (Chouliaraki and Stolic 2017; Efe 2019; Gabrielatos and Baker 2008).

It is worth noting that these limited representations may, at least in part, result from constraints to journalistic practice, which make it difficult for media professionals to access sources outside of official channels. For instance, Gemi, Ulasiuk, and Triandafyllidou (2013) analysed the news-making routines of mainstream European newspapers and television networks, revealing that journalists often operate within pre-determined parameters when covering migration issues, which impacts the kinds of issues that receive the most attention (and how these can be framed). They also found that journalists rarely have access to people from refugee backgrounds, further restricting them from presenting balanced representations of their plight (Gemi, Ulasiuk, and Triandafyllidou 2013).

Another factor is that dominant frames, especially those that present racial minority groups in a stereotypical fashion, often result from market demands such as those associated with maintaining audiences and/or advertising revenue (Kellner 2009). These demands can exacerbate pressures felt by news organisations to prioritise framings designed to attract the largest possible audience (Thussu 2009), which, as Mares (2002) argues, can lead to distorted, oversimplified, and/or stereotypical framings of people seeking asylum. Additionally, the specific time period with which certain events are reported can affect the extent to which certain frames are presented. Outgroups, especially migrants and people from asylum seeking backgrounds, are routinely scapegoated for a slew of societal problems and therefore, salient developments in a given region's political, economic, and/or social climate may influence how journalists cover topics associated with immigration and seeking asylum (Jacobs et al. 2018; Snow, Vliegenthart, and Corrigall-Brown 2007).

In terms of how the victim/threat binary impacts societal understandings of asylum issues, there is some evidence to suggest that audiences both accept and reject these representations. Höijer (2004) found that while audiences accepted dominant representations of children, women and the elderly as ideal victims deserving compassion, they responded to a story featuring a crying man in a Macedonian refugee camp begging to be resettled in Norway by describing him as selfish and distasteful. This suggests that, in order to experience compassion for asylum seekers, news audiences must be able to view them as helpless and innocent. In recent research by Smets et al. (2019), audiences were highly critical of the media's positioning of asylum seekers as either dangerous or helpless, with many calling for more balanced representations that present asylum seekers in less demonising and less miserabilist terms. While Höijer’s (2004) findings demonstrate audiences' acceptance of mediated constructions of asylum seekers as either victims or threats, Smets et al. (2019) demonstrates considerable push-back.

While it is clear from the literature that publics hold highly variable positions regarding mediated constructions of asylum seekers, sparse empirical attention has been paid to individual factors that may account for these differing perspectives. There is some evidence to suggest that age, educational attainment, and political views impact how audiences perceive news coverage of divisive issues. Some studies, for example, have found that people are more inclined to agree with news discourses that align with their own ideological and political views (Coe et al. 2008; Morris 2007), however, limited scholarship has specifically examined how audiences' views about people seeking asylum may factor into their evaluations of news depictions of the issue. As such, the analysis presented in this article addresses two key research questions:

1. What ideas do Australian media audiences present when discussing dominant constructions of asylum seekers?

2. How do Australian news audiences draw upon their own perspectives about people seeking asylum when critically discussing these representations?

Research Design

Sampling and Participants

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 Western Australians between May 2015 and April 2016. The sample was recruited using purposive sampling, whereby participants are selected because they meet a certain criteria (Willig 2008). It was important that participants held a range of views about people seeking asylum so findings could be analysed with consideration of how these differing stances are articulated and rationalised. This approach—also known as “sampling for maximum variation”—enables findings and conclusions to account for the range of experiences and attitudes present within the sample (Waller, Farquharson, and Dempsey 2016). Snowballing methods, where prior participants refer others to the study (Noy 2008), were also deployed. This approach was necessary to ensure that the sample included people with undecided and/or ambivalent views. Thus group is difficult to identify and engage as those who answer general “calls for participants” tend to hold strong opinions about the topic at hand (Ellard-Gray et al. 2015). Prior to commencing their interviews, participants completed a brief questionnaire to ascertain their basic demographic details, including age, gender, ethnicity, religion, educational attainment and stance on people seeking asylum (see Table 1). Asylum views were ascertained through an analysis of how they responded when asked whether they believe Australia should accept asylum seekers. Interviewees who objected were placed in the “non-accepting” category (n = 5), while those who expressed more welcoming perspectives were considered to hold an “accepting” stance (n = 11). Some, however, voiced a combination of “accepting” and “non-accepting” views, or stated that they consider themselves “on the fence” (n = 8)—these participants were classified as “ambivalent”.

Table 1. Participants’ demographic details and asylum stance.

Pseudonym	Gender	Age	Nationality	Religion	Education level	Asylum stance
Renee	Female	57	Australian	Roman Catholic	Postgraduate	Accepting
Brooke	Female	29	Australian	Christian	TAFE Diploma^a	Ambivalent
Jessica	Female	22	Australian	Agnostic	Bachelor's Degree	Accepting
Jodie	Female	41	Australian	Atheist	Postgraduate	Accepting
Gillian	Female	41	Australian	Uniting Church	High School (Year 12)	Accepting
Ingrid	Female	73	Australian	Not disclosed	Postgraduate	Accepting
Jane	Female	57	Australian	Atheist	Bachelor's Degree	Accepting
Susan	Female	59	Australian	Atheist	Graduate Diploma	Accepting
Patsy	Female	68	Australian	Church of England	TAFE Diploma	Ambivalent
Beth	Female	36	Indigenous-Australian	Christian	High School (Year 10)	Non-accepting
Zara	Female	25	Pakistani-Australian	Islamic (Sunni)	Bachelor's Degree	Ambivalent
Katie	Female	28	Australian	Roman Catholic	Bachelor's Degree	Non-accepting
Al	Non-Binary	19	Australian	Atheist	High School (Year 12)	Accepting
Adam	Male	29	Australian	Agnostic	TAFE Diploma	Accepting
Andrew	Male	30	Australian	Not disclosed	High School (Year 12)	Ambivalent
Luke	Male	34	Australian	Not disclosed	High School (Year 12)	Accepting
Sam	Male	28	Australian	Spiritual	High School (Year 10)	Ambivalent
Bryan	Male	45	British-Australian	Church of England	Bachelor's Degree	Non-accepting
David	Male	33	Venezuelan-Australian	Catholic	Postgraduate	Accepting
Tom	Male	66	Australian	Not disclosed	Bachelor's Degree	Ambivalent
Gary	Male	71	Australian	Church of England	TAFE Diploma	Ambivalent
Don	Male	66	Australian	Church of England	High School (Year 10)	Non-accepting
Mark	Male	24	Australian	Catholic	Bachelor's Degree	Ambivalent
Reece	Male	24	Australian	Not disclosed	TAFE Diploma	Non-accepting

^a TAFE (Technical and Further Education) refers to vocational-focused institutions that provide qualifying courses under the Australian Quality Training Framework.

During their interviews, participants were asked open-ended questions concerning their perspectives on asylum seekers and how the Australian news media represents the issue. These questions included: “what comes to mind for you when you hear the term asylum seeker?”; “how do you feel about the Australian government's policies for people seeking asylum?”; “how do you typically come across information about people seeking asylum?”; “what kinds of media sources do you prefer to engage with and why?”; and “what do you think about portrayals of asylum seekers in the Australian news media?” To facilitate in-depth analysis, all interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed verbatim. In all publications arising from this study, participants’ real names are replaced with pseudonyms (and all other identifying details are redacted) to maintain confidentiality.

Analysis

Asylum seekers face significant marginalisation in Australia, confounded by widespread acceptance of exclusionary ideas that deny their belonging. It was therefore necessary to examine interview data with consideration of how the emerging themes relate to wider power structures. To achieve this, interviews were analysed using Fairclough’s (1992) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which recognises the various ideological functions of language as a tool that can both reproduce and transform unequal power relations. CDA thus pays careful attention to how societies draw upon collective values and norms to form and articulate our worldviews (Titscher et al. 2000).

In addition to CDA, Rhetorical Analysis (RA) was deployed, which permits scholars to interrogate ideas in light of their broader historical and argumentative contexts (Billig 1987). RA focuses on the dialogic manner of everyday interaction, which is characterised by the positioning of certain perspectives as arguments against a competing idea (Potter and Wetherell 1987). Another name for this phenomenon is “duelling discourses”—a term coined by New Zealand sociologist Augie Fleras (1998) and later observed in anti-racism scholarship by Farida Fozdar (2008). As the findings will demonstrate, participants often oriented their perspectives (both concerning people seeking asylum and mediated constructions of the issue) in a manner that directly opposes an alternative idea. The application of RA therefore enabled meaningful interpretation of how audiences frame their resistance to dominant ideas, as well as how they contrast these with counter-positions.

The principles of CDA closely align with a cultural studies approach to studying audiences, as both focus on how dominant ideologies serve to reinforce broader social and structural power relations (Thompson 1990). Utilising CDA in audience research can illuminate the ways in which media culture can both manipulate public opinion in favour of dominant ideological positions and empower individuals to resist these ideas. Indeed, several scholars have critiqued the assumption that news audiences simply accept hegemonic discourses, arguing that audience reception is a more complex and dynamic process where people apply their own meanings to media messages (Hall 1980; Livingstone 1998; Madianou 2009). Audience Reception Analysis (ARA) is grounded in the same premise, positing that audiences vary considerably with respect to how they interpret media messages (Hall 1980). ARA is thus concerned with exploring active choices and personal context, recognising that how audiences evaluate a given text will depend on the attitudes and subject positions they occupy. This paper adopts the notion of audiences as active rather than passive consumers of media information, while recognising the power of media discourse to shape and reinforce broader societal sentiments. The combination of ARA with CDA enabled in-depth exploration of the nuances by which people with diverse perspectives and experiences evaluate Australian news discourses about asylum seekers, paying particular attention to how they construct arguments that both accept and resist dominant framings.

This research applied an inductive approach to analysis, enabling discourses to emerge organically as opposed to being selected based on pre-determined parameters. This was achieved by identifying and noting instances in each transcript where interviewees drew upon common themes or arguments noted in prior scholarship. Statements pertaining to discourses that are either not reported in the literature to date (or have rarely been observed) were then highlighted. The next step was to identify discourses communicated by more than one participant, illuminating shared collective representations of the key themes that emerged (Durkheim 1994).

Upon completing this process for all 24 transcripts, participants' direct quotes were grouped into two broad thematic categories: (1) their perspectives concerning asylum seekers in Australia and (2) their views regarding news media representations of the topic. For both categories, each quote was coded according to the more specific arguments being conveyed, and instances where participants resisted or rejected ideas about asylum seekers that are presented in media discourse were noted alongside interesting rhetorical and linguistic features of these statements. While this article focuses on the discourse categories surrounding interviewees' critiques of the “threat” and “victim” tropes, Haw (2018) presents a more comprehensive discussion of the larger project with which these findings derive.

Results and Discussion

The majority of participants (n = 22) cited news coverage as their main source of information about asylum seekers. When discussing their media engagement, most referred to commercial or “mainstream” sources, notably broadcast bulletins, newspapers, and online news (accessed predominantly via social media sites such as Facebook). Furthermore, several participants (n = 13) stated that they often seek out content that aligns with their pre-existing political views (see Haw 2020 for further discussion of this finding), however, most (n = 22) stated that they do not feel adequately informed about asylum seekers by the Australian news media.

The sample both reinforced and challenged mediated constructions of the “victim/threat” binary. Participants with a “non-accepting” asylum stance often reinforced dominant constructions of asylum seekers as “threats” and/or “troublemakers”, with their views focusing on asylum seekers as symbolic and/or physical threats (Atwell Seate and Mastro 2016; van der Linden and Jacobs 2016). By contrast, those who offered “accepting” perspectives tended to resist the threat discourse, arguing instead that asylum seekers are the “real victims”. Some participants, however, opposed the “victim” trope, stating that it presents asylum seekers as “hapless” and lacking agency. Others, however, dismissed the “victim” narrative as “emotionally manipulative”. These participants tended to hold “non-accepting” asylum views. This theme is unpacked in the ensuing discussion, starting with how participants responded to news media constructions of asylum seekers as “threats” and “troublemakers”.

“We are Just Eating It Up”: Responses to the Threat Narrative

As noted, it was common for participants to connect their own views of asylum seekers to their perceptions of media discourse. For example, Bryan voiced strong opposition to Australia's acceptance of asylum seekers, offering the following explanation when asked to elaborate:

Everything I see, you know, in the media and all that, is about them making trouble and being dangerous. It's, they're either rioting or jumping on roofs.

Male, aged 40–49, British-Australian, “non-accepting” views

Bryan's mention of asylum seekers “jumping on roofs” appears to be a reference to reported incidents in Australian immigration detention facilities whereby detainees have stood on the roofs to protest their incarceration (Newman, Proctor, and Dudley 2011). Interestingly, Bryan had not yet been asked to reflect on media coverage when he offered these remarks, however, he refers specifically to news representations, noting that these depict asylum seekers as “making trouble”, which he offers as the reason for his “non-accepting” stance.

Later, when asked if any specific news stories have stood out for him, Bryan brought up the issue of hunger strikes and lip-sewing incidents, referring to such behaviour as “emotional blackmail”:

The hunger strike stuff, you know, the sewing their lips shut and all this emotional blackmail that apparently we are just eating it up and giving in to them.

Similarly, when asked to provide her stance on whether Australia should accept asylum seekers, Katie made the following remarks:

I think it depends. I think there are two kinds of asylum seekers: those who really need help and those who play the system. Based on what I've seen, they know how to play with emotions as well. That's their way of gaining what they want. It's just like a child, when a child doesn't get a lollipop, it throws a tantrum.

Female, aged 18–29, Australian, “non-accepting” views

These comments demonstrate Katie's acceptance of the “deserving” versus “undeserving” binary, as she contrasts those who “really need help” with those who self-harm, whom she likens to children who “throw a tantrum”. Like Bryan, she references asylum seekers' protesting, framing such behaviour as a deliberate manipulation. This is also evident in her use of the phrase “play the system” as well as her suggestion that asylum seekers “play with emotions” as a means of “gaining what they want”, which aligns with Bryan's description of protesting as “emotional blackmail”. This finding illustrates that some audience members accept dominant narratives of asylum seekers as “making trouble”, connecting such depictions to their own stance (explicitly in Bryan's case and implicitly in Katie's). Most participants who referred to media representations aligning with the threat discourse, however, critiqued such constructions.

Jane argued that most news coverage she has been exposed to about asylum seekers is “highly problematic” and when asked if she can recall any specific examples, stated:

‘Children overboard', as soon as they said that I knew it was all lies, I just knew it. There is no way, women that go through all that and have gotten through all that time on the boat and everything, go and throw in their babies over to drown in that situation. There were no facts. I think that's the part that really annoyed me more than anything else.

Female, aged 50–59, Australian, “accepting” views

As stated, Australia's “children overboard” incident sparked widespread media attention, which was later the subject of intense criticism and scrutiny when the Government's claims that asylum seekers deliberately threw their children into the ocean were debunked (for a more comprehensive analysis of this event, see Slattery 2003 and Mares 2002).

Another participant, Jodie, brought up “children overboard” as an event she felt was misrepresented in the Australian media, stating that much of the coverage she encountered “completely abandoned all pretence of so-called objective reporting”:

Look at how the media portrayed the ‘children overboard' affair. It really did entrench this view of how asylum seekers are a threat to our borders. I think that was a really important point where the media, and specifically the Murdoch media, they're a prime example, this was the point where they completely abandoned all pretence of so-called objective reporting and, well, completely and utterly distorted the public view towards asylum seekers.

Female, aged 40-49, Serbian-Australian “‘accepting”' views

While Jodie identifies the “children overboard” coverage as a pivotal moment that resulted in the widespread construction of asylum seekers as a physical and symbolic threat (Atwell Seate and Mastro 2016; van der Linden and Jacobs 2016), Jane focuses on the falsity of the story, emphasising the fact that “there were no facts”. Furthermore, Jodie references the Murdoch media¹ as a “prime example” of a news organisation that perpetuated the “threat” narrative, aligning with scholarly observations of the Murdoch media constructing asylum seekers in a predominantly negative way (Hobbs and McKnight 2014). Applying an Audience Reception lens, Jodie and Jane's comments demonstrate an “oppositional reading” of Australian coverage of this event (Hall 1980). In other words, they have resisted the dominant framing of asylum seekers as a “threatening other”.

In addition to raising concerns about the falsity of depictions presenting a “threat” discourse, some participants noted the lack of context in such coverage. For example, when asked to reflect on specific aspects of media coverage she has encountered about people seeking asylum, Brooke stated:

All that stuff about protesting in the camps, it seems to present a scary and kind of exaggerated image of what these people are like and sort of a ‘this is why they are in detention' kind of image, but without any reasons for why they are protesting and, I'm like ok, so what is the real problem and what is being done about it? Like, if they told us why they protest, we might understand better.

Female, aged 18–29, Australian, “ambivalent” views

These remarks indicate frustration with the way Australian coverage depicts protesting asylum seekers, suggesting that it fails to inform the public about what drives people to protest in the first place. Brooke's remark “if they told us why they protest, we might understand better” is of significance because earlier in her interview, she noted protesting as an signifier that asylum seekers are “ungrateful” to Australia for considering their asylum claims. It is therefore apparent that although Brooke's exposure to coverage about protesting asylum seekers has impacted her own stance - indicating some degree of acceptance of framings of protesting asylum seekers as “troublemakers”—she also posits that these depictions offer limited information and present the issue in a way that is “scary” and “kind of exaggerated”. The fact that Brooke critiques these constructions despite drawing on them to justify a view of asylum seekers as “ungrateful” suggests that she has taken a “negotiated reading” of this depiction. According to Hall (1980), this occurs when audiences simultaneously accept and resist a given message. It also represents a key facet of Audience Reception scholarship, which recognises that individuals often hold nuanced and contradictory perspectives regarding mediated constructions of the world around us (Denemark 2005).

The discursive phenomenon of “duelling discourses” (Fleras 1998) was also evident within participants' critiques of the “threat” and “troublemaker” narratives. For example, during a discussion about the aspects of Australian coverage she finds problematic, Jessica pointed out how asylum seekers are often portrayed as “the problem” when in fact they are the “real victims”:

It just kind of feels like they put out this image of asylum seekers as the problem when really it's them who are the real victims here.

Female, aged 18–29, Australian, “accepting” views

Here, Jessica demonstrates an “oppositional reading” (Hall 1980), directly contrasting the idea of asylum seekers as “the problem” with her counter position that they are the “real victims”. Prior research has shown how the “victim” and “threat” narratives are discursively pitted against one another (Leach 2003; Van Acker and Hollander 2003), which is further demonstrated through Jessica's positioning of both ideas as dichotomous. As the following discussion will illustrate, however, the victim discourse is not without its critics.

“They are Human Beings”: Responses to the Victim Discourse

All participants who discussed mediated constructions of asylum seekers as “victims” resisted this framing in some manner. Those with “accepting” views felt that the victim narrative dehumanises asylum seekers by presenting them as passive and lacking in agency. Al, for instance, argued that coverage tends to present asylum seekers as “one extreme or the other”:

You don't get much sense of who they are as people, like, I think it is always, like, a victim in need of our help and collective goodwill or, like, violent potential terrorists out to get us. I'm not, like, I guess, I don't see why they need to be portrayed as one extreme or the other. Like, they are human beings at the end of the day.

Non-binary, aged 18–29, Australian, “accepting” views

Likewise, Susan remarked:

I worry about the idea that if asylum seekers aren't rioting and causing damage, they are these kind of nameless and hapless victims without a voice of their own. I feel like they have to be deviants or just, you know, totally agentless. And this, it bothers me cause' it really doesn't reflect who they are as people.

Female, aged 50–59, Australian, “accepting” views

An evident similarity between these two remarks, aside from their shared resistance of the “victim” versus “threat” binary, is their reference to asylum seekers' humanity. Al lambastes the presentation of asylum seekers as either victims who require our “collective goodwill” or “violent potential terrorists”, using this critique to emphasise the point that “they are human beings at the end of the day”. Similarly, Susan argues that media representations of asylum seekers portray them as “rioting and causing damage” or as “nameless and hapless victims without a voice”, both of which she asserts fail to “reflect who they are as people”. These comments signify an “oppositional” reading of such discourses—both participants outright reject the “victim/threat” binary, pointing to the dehumanisation inherent in both frames.

In stark contrast to these perspectives, some participants - notably those who voiced “non-accepting” asylum views - resisted the victim frame in order to serve a completely different argument: that the “victim” narrative is intentionally manufactured by media organisations to evoke sympathetic responses from the public. For example, Katie commented:

What they portray on the news, it's very subjective, and it's designed to create a certain ideal about asylum seekers. It's very emotional, to create this ‘poor them'.

Female, aged 18–29, Australian, “non-accepting” views

Reece shared similar sentiments:

My thought are that this whole idea that of the ‘hard done by’ asylum seeker reflects that, really, people watch the news when it's emotional. It's sad. And that's what these stories are really about because emotions sell. So it's about manipulating people and their thoughts to get a really good emotional reaction.

Male, aged 18–29, Australian, “non-accepting” views

When asked to elaborate, Reece referred to Aylan Kurdi, a young Kurdish boy who was fleeing the Syrian war with his family in 2015, and subsequently drowned after the boat he was travelling in capsized:

The biggest example is out of the Syria refugee crisis, there was the picture of the investigator with the three year old cradled in his arms. There are so many things you could say about that picture. A worker holding a young child, and doing it in a way that showed he really cared about the child even though that child was dead. That's a fantastic story because it's bound to bring about mass public outcry. I mean, of course it's a bit manipulative. What if it showed someone pulling a full-grown man across the sand?

Here, Reece presents the Aylan Kurdi coverage as an example of the media engaging in emotional manipulation, labelling it as a “fantastic story” due to its propensity to evoke “mass public outcry”. Indeed, coverage of Aylan's death facilitated a worldwide visual spectatorship of asylum seekers' suffering, with many referencing the incident in calls for a more compassionate global response to the Syrian refugee crisis (Parker, Naper, and Goodman 2018). Reece's use of this story to illustrate his argument about “manipulative” media coverage, however, suggests that compassionate audience responses to coverage of this nature is not a given.

Reece also poses the rhetorical question “what if it showed someone pulling a full-grown man across the sand?” implying that such an event would not have invoked the same degree of “public outcry”. This is an interesting finding as he alludes to a commonly observed framing of asylum seekers as either “deserving” or “undeserving” objects of compassion (Leach 2003; Peterie 2017; Van Acker and Hollander 2003), suggesting that a media image depicting an adult male's suffering is less likely to elicit a compassionate audience response than that of a young child. As this discussion has shown, this method of contrasting “deserving” and “undeserving” refugees in mediated discourse received considerable push back from interviewees, but for vastly different reasons. The following discussion highlights the implications from both a critical discourse and audience reception perspective, noting some important considerations for journalistic practice.

Conclusion

Media representations of the asylum issue, and how publics respond, are highly complex, especially as both influence, and are influenced by, deeply entrenched discourses concerning belonging and national identity. The findings reported in this paper reveal a nuanced relationship between audiences and the news media, illuminating some important argumentative features of resistance to dominant framings of asylum seekers that we may otherwise assume audiences take for granted. Notably, news constructions of asylum seekers as “victims” and “threats” were critiqued widely, in some cases by participants whose self-reported attitudes about asylum seekers align with the very representations they were challenging. Of note is the fact that participants actively engaged with the debate about asylum seekers, using their critiques of media to legitimise their own positions (and vice versa).

As more than half of the sample admitted to engaging with media content that reflects ideas in line with their own political stance, participants' strong critiques of news constructions of asylum seekers is notable. This finding suggests that, for some audiences, self-selecting news content with which they feel ideologically aligned does not shield them from exposure to framings they disagree with. This is an important consideration for scholarship surrounding both media effects and media selection, especially in light of the finding that many participants stated that they do not feel adequately informed by news coverage of asylum seekers. For most audiences, however, there are limited alternative means of accessing information about the topic and therefore, their engagement with news is of utmost importance.

These findings also carry important implications for practice, highlighting how the Australian news media do more than merely reflect societal developments while covering asylum issues. Rather, they promote a specific view on the issue, with the threat/victim binary representing a central theme (Jacobs et al. 2018) and as demonstrated here, audiences are picking up on this theme. As such, this paper reiterates the important role of journalists in informing publics about people seeking asylum. Not only do audiences take note of news constructions of asylum seekers as victims and threats, they draw upon these frames in discussions of their own perspectives on people seeking asylum as well as their assessments of the veracity of media framings: while some accept and reproduce victim and threat frames, others resist them. The nature of this resistance, however, appears to depend on how audiences connect media messages to their own perspectives. This points to a need to more closely examine how such perspectives are formed, accounting for the differing impacts of individual social, cultural, and ideological factors that may account for why audiences perceive media discourse in such divergent ways. Here, the challenge lies in how to achieve this while recognising the power of media to shape and reinforce societal attitudes. How can we better understand the conditions under which people accept an idea despite their awareness of alternative positions? This, along with questions of changes in audience reactions over time, is among the many questions for scholars and practitioners to address to better understand the processes underpinning audience responses to mediated constructions of human suffering.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Associate Professor Farida Fozdar (University of Western Australia) and Professor Rob Cover (RMIT) for your valuable guidance over the course of this project.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship, undertaken at the University of Western Australia.

Notes

1 The “Murdoch media” is a term commonly used to describe organisations within News Corp Australia, one of Australia's largest media conglomerates, owned by Rupert Murdoch.