Chapter published in:
Migration and Media: Discourses about identities in crisis
Edited by Lorella Viola and Andreas Musolff
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 81] 2019
► pp. 265–290

Chapter 11
Displaced Ukrainians

Russo-Ukrainian discussions of victims from the conflict zone in Eastern Ukraine

This paper compares several discourse representations of migrants in the British media with the data on Ukrainian displaced people from the conflict zone in Eastern Ukraine. The comparison shows that mainstream media in Russia and Ukraine attempt to depict displaced Ukrainians sympathetically, to win the hearts and minds of the people from the disputed conflict zone and to evoke approval from the international community. Participants in online debates in both countries actively use different techniques of negativisation of the images of migrants. They often either rely on a novel vocabulary for abuses or adapt old disparaging expressions activating cultural prejudices. The paper concludes that Russian and Ukrainian sets of abuse developed during the confrontation reinforce the specifics of the national vision of the conflict development.
Keywords: humanitarianism, negativisation, numerical elements, scroungers, catastrophe scenario, Russia, Ukraine, social media, official media, stereotypes, disparaging expressions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and method
  • 3.“Numbers”, “figures”, and “masses”: Are they perceived as a threat?
    • 3.1Numbers and figures
    • 3.2Masses of water
  • 4.Agents of evil as activators of topoi of economic burden and threat
    • 4.1Use of “parasite”-terminology
    • 4.2Russian stereotypes about Ukrainians
    • 4.3New names for terrorists and victims of propaganda
  • 5.Representations of victims and aggressors
    • 5.1Refugees as victims
    • 5.2Blending victims and persecutors
    • 5.3IDPs as supporters of the aggressor
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 07 March 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.81.12abe
References
BBC news
2006 “The Press in Ukraine” (31 October), ehttp://​news​.bbc​.co​.uk​/2​/hi​/europe​/4073375​.stm (last accessed 20 June, 2016).
BBC Monitoring
2008 “The Press in Russia”. (16 May). http://​news​.bbc​.co​.uk​/2​/hi​/europe​/4315129​.stm. (last accessed 20 June, 2016)
Burroughs, Elaine
2015 “The Discourse of Controlling “Illegal Immigration” in Irish Parliamentary Texts”. Journal of Language and Politics 14 (4): 479–500. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cisneros, J. David
2008 “Contaminated Communities: The Metaphor of ‘Immigrant as Pollutant’ in Media Representations of Immigration.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 11 (4):569–601. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dugin, Alexandr
2005 Поп-культура и знаки времени. [Pop culture and signs of the time]. Saint Petersburg: Amfora.Google Scholar
Engstrom, Robin
2015 “The In-group and Out-groups of the British National Party and the UK Independence Party”, Journal of Language and Politics 14 (4):501–527. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gienger, Viola
2015 “Ukraine's 'Invisible Crisis': 1.5 Million Who Fled War with Russia”, United States Institute of Peace. November 23. http://​www​.usip​.org​/olivebranch​/2015​/11​/23​/ukraines​-invisible​-crisis​-15​-million​-who​-fled​-war​-russia (last accessed 20 May, 2016)Google Scholar
Hamilton, L. David, and Jeffrey W. Sherman
1994 “Stereotypes”. In Handbook of Social Cognition, Vol.2, ed. by Robert S. Wyer, and Thomas K. Srull, 1–68. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Holyoak, J. Keith, and Peter C. Gordon
1984 “Information processing and social cognition”. In Handbook of Social Cognition. Vol.1, ed. by Robert S. Wyer, and Thomas K. Srull, 39–71. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
KhosraviNik, M Majid
2010 “The Representation of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Immigrants in British Newspapers: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Language and Politics 9(1): 1–28. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
KhosraviNik, Majid, Krzyzanowski, Michal, Wodak, Ruth
2012 “Dynamics of Representation in Discourse: Immigration in the British Press.” In Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Michi Messer, Renee Schroeder, and Ruth Wodak, 283–295. Vienna: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Konoplyov, Sergei, and Alexander Urbanskiy
2016 "Hybrid war in Ukraine: what is next?" Countering Hybrid Threats: Lessons Learned from Ukraine. ed. byIancu Niculae, Andrei Fortuna Cristian Barna Mihaela Teodor. IOS press: Amsterdam, Clifton, Tokyo, Beijing. 96–101.Google Scholar
Magocsi, Paul Robert
1996 A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas
2011 “Migration, Media and ‘Deliberate’ Metaphors.” Metaphoric.de 21: 7–19.Google Scholar
2012 “Immigrants and Parasites: ‘The History of a Bio-Social Metaphor’”. In Migrations: Interdisciplinary perspectives ed. by Michi Messer, Renée Schroeder, and Ruth Wodak, 249–258. Vienna: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 “Dehumanizing Metaphors in UK Immigrant Debates in Press and Online Media”. Journal of Aggression and Conflict 3 (1): 41–56. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pohl, Walter, and Wodak, Ruth
2012 “The Discursive Construction of Migrants and Migration.” Migrations: Interdisciplinary perspectives ed. by Michi Messer, Renee Schröder, and Ruth Wodak, 205–212. Vienna: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Raskin, Victor
1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humour. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reid, Anna
1997 Borderland. A Journey through the History of Ukraine. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Rozenko, Pavlo
2015 “Each Temporary Displaced Person to Receive Social Assistance Timely. Press Service of the Ministry of Social Policy”. Web Portal of Ukrainian Government. (7 April). http://​www​.kmu​.gov​.ua​/control​/en​/publish​/article​?art​_id​=248078440 (last accessed 2 August, 2016)Google Scholar
Stepova, Olena
2016 “Мы и они: что дальше? Вдовы.” [Us and Them: What is Ahead? Widows]. All be Ukraine! (14 March). http://​allbeukraine​.blogspot​.com​.au​/2016​/03​/blog​-post​_93​.html. (last accessed 5 August, 2016).Google Scholar
Subtelny, Orest
1994 (second edition). Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press/Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
TASS, Russian News Agency
2014 “Russian PM Stresses Need for Assistance to Ukrainian Refugees in Russia”. (24 September). http://​tass​.ru​/en​/russia​/751130 (last accessed 2 August, 2016)
UHNCR (UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES)
2017a Opereation: Russian Federation. (24 November). http://​reporting​.unhcr​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/pdfsummaries​/GA2018​-RussianFederation​-eng​.pdf (last accessed 28 April, 2018).Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun Adrianus
1991 Racism and the Press: Critical Studies in Racism and Migration. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2012 “The Role of the Press in Reproduction of Racism”. Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Michi Messer, Renée Schroeder, and Ruth Wodak. 15–29. Vienna: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
1996 “The Genesis of Racist Discourse in Austria since 1989.” In Text and Practices: Readings in CDA, ed. by Caldas-Coulthard Cr, M. Coulthard, 107–128. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2011 The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingsoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Teun Adrianus van Dijk
(eds) 2000 Racism at the Top: Parliamentary Discourses on Ethnic Issues in Six European States. Klagenfurt: Drava.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer
(eds) 2001 Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zinken, Jörg
2003 “Ideological Imagination: Intertextual and Correlational Metaphors in Political Discourse”. Discourse and Society 14: 507–523. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Moen-Larsen, Natalia
2020. “Suitcase – shelling – Russia”: narratives about refugees from Ukraine in Russian media. East European Politics 36:1 ► pp. 124 ff. Crossref logo
Palomino-Manjón, Patricia
2022. Book Review: Natalia Knoblock (ed.), Language of Conflict: Discourses of the Ukrainian Crisis. Discourse Studies 24:1 ► pp. 135 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.