The construction of refugees and asylum seekers in german print media: a critical discourse analysis of the “refugee crisis” in Germany from 2015- 2017

Abstract

In September 2015, the Federal Republic of Germany had to deal with an unexpected number of refugees crossing the German border. Global conflicts inter alia the civil war in Syria caused a global movement of refugees, leading to 13,000 people crossing the German border every day. This development presented an enormous challenge for German society and in particular for politics and media. Journalists faced, among other things, the question, of how to describe this mass of people, using phrases like “flood of refugees” or “wave of refugees”, that compared people to a natural disaster rather than humans. This research proposal asks in which way the German print media discursively constructed refugees and asylum seekers during the refugee crisis in Germany between 2015 and 2017. By proposing the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis the impact of linguistic patterns and the use of language in general on the portrayal of refugees shall be demonstrated.