Gamers versus zombies? Visual mediation of the citizen/non-citizen encounter in Europe’s ‘refugee crisis’

ABSTRACT

This article identifies the visual representation of Europe’s “refugee crisis” in the media as a key dimension of the communicative architecture of the crisis and its aftermath. Effectively, it argues, the powerful, even iconic, imagery that the media produced and shared during the 2015 “crisis” affirmed ideological frames of incompatible difference, perpetually dividing European citizens and refugees. The article focuses on some of the fundamental elements of the 2015 crisis’s visual grammar to demonstrate how they have (re-)produced popular fears of strangeness and the need for containment and control of foreign bodies. This visual grammar, we argue, imitated and procreated recognizable representations of popular culture to exaggerate newcomers’ strangeness and incompatible difference from the national subject. On the one hand, many news media simulated zombies’ threatening strangeness in images of refugee massification; on the other, many news media images reaffirmed the decisive power of the national subject over refugees’ fate, not unlike the video game player who unilaterally controls a game and takes action when confronted by zombies. This grammar, we argue, symbolically predetermines encounters between citizens and refugees, by emphasizing their incompatible difference and newcomers’ strangeness.

Acknowledgements

The Migration and the Media project (2015–2017) was conducted at the Department of Media and Communications, LSE, and coordinated by Lilie Chouliaraki, Myria Georgiou and Rafal Zaborowski. We sincerely thank our colleagues Tijana Stolic and Kristina Kolbe for their contribution to the project’s realization as well as student coders working on the project: Luca Bertuzzi, Saachi Bhatia, Elizabeth Carter, Christie Chapman, Sophie Chauvet, Deborah Irene Christine, Giulia Cosenza, Jasmin Cuppone, Alix de Ladoucette, Ahmed Dizman, Saptarishi Dutta, Fabian Ferrari, Andreas Filippou, Natalie Gedeon, Katerina Glyniadaki, Safaa Halahla, Valerie Hase, Robert Hegedus, Gyorgyi Horvath, Seema Huneidi, Yu (Tina) Jiang, Michael Knoeller, Fiona Koch, Afroditi Koulaxi, Tina Krell, Min Mao, Terry Muthahhari, Rita Nemeth, Jill Russo, Alisa Schellenberg, Wiktoria Syska, Cindy Tang, Fedra Terekidou, Louise Thommessen, Tai Tsui, Ana Vergara, Camille Villafane-Seda, Jacopo Villanacci, Rong Wang, Linn Wiman, Yiwa Yang and Ke Zou.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Throughout the article we use the word “refugee” on the basis of new arrivals’ self-identification. The vast majority of people arriving to Europe in 2015 claimed asylum (Chouliaraki et al., 2017), even if for many this claim was unsuccessful. While international and national governance defines refugees on the basis of successful claims to asylum (https://www.unhcr.org/what-is-a-refugee.html), this requirement excludes many people from a definition that is granted on the basis of legal or political expectations.

2. The media analyzed were Alaraby Al Jadeed, Al Hayat, and Al Jazeera (Arab European/Middle East), The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and CBS (Canada), Le Figaro and Le Monde (France), Suddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurther Allgemenine Zeitung, and Das Erste (Germany), EFSYN, Kathimerini, and ANT1 (Greece), Nepszabadsag, Magyar Nemzet, and M1 (Hungary), Times of India, Hindustan Times, and NDTV (India), Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, and TgCom24 (Italy), Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, and SVT (Sweden), The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, and BBC (UK), Irish Times, Irish Independent, and RTE 9 (Ireland), Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and CNN (United States).

3. Image available via https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jun/20/the-20-photographs-of-the-week#img-11.

4. Image available via https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cronaca/quinto-di-treviso-vincono-i-residenti-immigrati-fuori-dal-residence_2123098-201502a.shtml.

5. Image available via https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03426/migrantsmacedonia_3426838b.jpg.

6. Image available via https://images-1.svd.se/v2/images/bceb4c89-c8cb-47b3-b7e1-32af5d30e4a2?fit=crop&h=348&q=70&upscale=true&w=522&s=9a285b77593ed16d7341380cc8d98aa0b070b4e1.