The impact of language (via mass media communication) on migrant belonging and identity

 

Introduction: awareness and accountability

With media being more widely accessible today, thanks to our tablet-shaped pockets, it is fair to say that we are absorbing news, advertising, and political/institutional public relations messages on a mass scale. With so many media messages flooding our consciousness every day, surely they contribute, if not form, our perceptions of the world and the people with whom we share it. “According to research by Microsoft, consumers can be exposed to as many as 600 messages or signals a day from brands hunting ears, eyeballs and, ultimately, wallets and purses.” (B&T Magazine, 2018). It is no coincidence that ‘hunted’ was the verb of choice here. Brands, which I take to include political parties and policy, prey on people as consumers, there to consume messages that are formulated to shape opinion and maintain power structures on a mass scale.

With a ten-year background in advertising and mass media production, having worked in various project management and director roles across client and agency landscapes, as well as an overlapping four-year career as a copywriter and feature writer for numerous published magazines; the focus of this paper is first and foremost about awareness. It is about adding a new level of transnational awareness to an industry that is usually, in my experience, driven by consumption, perception, and profit data only. We need to look beyond the boardroom and creative brainstorming sessions and closely examine the impact of language; the way that language extends beyond the brief we are delivered. We need to be aware and accountable for each word, each phrase, and each ‘concept’ that goes to air/print.

When looking at the impact of language in repetitive media and mass communication rhetoric (including advertising campaigns and political discourse), I will focus on the discourse associated with refugees and asylum seekers in Australia, questioning its contribution to a feeling of ‘otherness’ and its effects on the migrant experience, especially when it comes to creating a sense of belonging and identity formation in a new country.

Australia’s media consumption and the question of trust

In a report titled, How Australia’s Viewing Habits Have Changed Over the Past Five Years, Nielsen Media states that the average Australian home now has 6.4 screens and watches 81 hours and 25 minutes of television per person, per month (2017). While this statistic is staggering, the consumption of news-specific media on smart devices is even higher. The Media Consumer Survey Report, released by Deloitte, states that social media is now the primary source of news for Millennials at 29%, used twice as frequently as television (2016). The Digital News Report: Australia 2017, as published by the News and Media Centre of the University of Canberra, states that 48% of Australians trusted the news they consumed and 33% neither trusted nor distrusted the news messages they received (2017). This then means that only a mere 19% of Australians are questioning the news messages they receive. With such high statistics of trust placed on media communication, there is a contract with the audience that is established. A contract of truth and objectivity that places the news source in a position of power and influence on a mass scale.

Patterns of media consumption, biases, passivity, and media access across different sources certainly vary this scale of trust, as discussed in detail by McLeod, Wise, and Perryman in Thinking about the media: a review of theory and research on media perceptions, media effects perceptions, and their consequences, who state that “A bevy of individual-level factors are also related to perceptions of news media trust and credibility.” (2017, p 43) Some of these factors are said to be age, gender, social class, level of education, and political ideology (2017, p 43); however, with whatever specific scale to which we measure media trust, the mere consumption statistics are enough to tell us, and our industry, that we need to be more aware of and accountable for our choices of language, especially when it comes to the impact it can have on vulnerable people.

How language can criminalize, dehumanize, and create the Other

With a focus on Australian media, there are two repetitive phrases of mass media discourse that the media-consuming public is fed via advertising, political rhetoric, policy announcements, news, and public relations: ‘Stop the Boats’ and ‘Boat People’.

It was during the 2013 election campaign when the yet-to-be-elected Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, first used the phrase ‘Stop the Boats.’ Without going into detail on the Australian asylum seeker policy, it is important to note that from 2013, under the Rudd government (which preceded the successful Abbott election campaign) to now, it is law that any refugee arriving by boat will not be processed in Australia. These refugees are sent to offshore processing centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Furthermore, even if people are found to be ‘legitimate refugees’, they will never be settled in Australia due to their mode of arrival. (BBC News, 2017). “Rights groups say conditions in the PNG and Nauru camps are totally inadequate, citing poor hygiene, cramped conditions, unrelenting heat and a lack of facilities. Holding asylum seekers in indefinite detention has caused widespread psychological harm and exposed them to dangers including physical and sexual assaults.” (BBC News, 2017). Furthermore, in an article by Marie Dhumieres, a rare statement by an offshore detainee is publicised: “‘In our country, the Taliban will come and they will slash our throats and finish our lives. It will take 10 minutes to die. But here, they are killing us by pain, taking our soul and our life slowly,’ […] they have been ‘abandoned to live like animals in the jungle’.” (2014).

My focus here is to discuss the impact of the specific media discourse; however, a background into the treatment of refugees is necessary to understand the sub-human category these people are placed in. This treatment attaches itself to the words ‘Boat People’ and continues to perpetuate a dichotomy between human and non-human. The creation of a law against boat arrivals, as discussed above, is also a way in which the non-human Other is created. This ‘production of criminality’ is described by Khosravi as a way to establish the ‘norm’ and therefore what is against that; what can be punished and what is a burden on society. (2011, p 116). “Criminals, poor people, homeless people, undocumented immigrants, and unidentified asylum seekers are all seen as threats to the wellbeing of the social body.” (Khosravi, 2011, p 4). It could therefore be said, that this creation of a criminal Other is done via the tools of law making as well as repetitive media discourse, which disseminates the message of criminality to a mass audience.

The policy that created this criminality was also described as border control. The notion of borders is also very important when it comes to the full comprehension of the impact of language: “Borders: arbitrary dividing lines that are simultaneously social, cultural, and psychic; territories to be patrolled against those whom they construct as outsiders, aliens, the Others; forms of demarcation where the very act of prohibition inscribes transgression; zones where fear of the Other is the fear of the self, places where claims to ownership—claims to ‘mine’, ‘yours’, and ‘theirs’ are staked out, contested, defended, and fought over.” (Brah, 1996, pp 194-195). This contention is exactly what was created with policy and the dissemination of language on a repetitive and mass scale.

By developing and perpetuating the phrase ‘Boat People’, the government and all other mass media distributors of the message, could be seen to be aiming to create a non-human Other, to create criminality that attaches to the bodies of the most vulnerable. And why? It is like what Khosravi says: to maintain the wellbeing of the social body. (2011, p 4). I would also argue that this otherness does not remain stuck only to those who are aiming to arrive in Australia as refugees via boat, but to non-white migrants who are currently living in Australia.  Lundström confirms this link when discussing the discursive concept of ‘the migrant’ which tends to be used as a marker of non-whiteness who […] is certainly confronted by negative racial stereotypes, racism, discrimination, marginalization, and exploitation. Despite their possible citizenship in the country in which they reside, non-white bodies tend to be read as ‘illegal immigrants’ or ‘asylum seekers’, therefore ‘out of place’. (2014, p 1). This reading by the host country could certainly hinder the migrant’s attempts at finding belonging and identity as they are collectively reduced to a status of criminality rather than citizen.

 

Narratives in the media and their effects on belonging and Identity formation

Al-Ali and Khalid introduce the role of nation-states in shaping, hindering, or encouraging transnational practices, stating that the different manifestations of transnationalism reveal that the legal, social, political, and economic context of nation-states cannot be ignored. In contrast, it appears pivotal to pay attention to the specific contexts in both sending and receiving states. (2002, pp 5). If the context in which you are arriving into a country includes the mass scale discourse that creates non-human Others to position against the human citizens, the impact would be paramount. So, how much influence does media have on migrants and their attempts to find belonging and shape identity? Brah discusses the positives of border writing with its ability to offer a rich, multi-faceted and nuanced description of border histories (1996, p 200). This, however, is a focus on literary texts, which Brah places in dichotomy of ‘world texts’ which I interpret as institutional, media, and political rhetoric. Text presented to the world via a contract with the audience that it is accurately and objectively presenting the truth of the world: “the move from literary text to ‘world’ text is much more fraught, contradictory, complex and problematic than is often acknowledged.” (1996, pp 200-201).

This move, that Brah describes as complex and problematic, is the place in which Leeuw and Rydin focus their research in Transnational Lives and the Media: Diasporic Media Spaces, which explores the functions that various media have in the process of identity formation when engaging with a new country (2007, pp 176). While Leeuw and Rydin point out that identity is a very complex concept, involving the conception of self and self in relation to a social context of belonging (2007, pp 177), the role of media is considered paramount. In fact, the researchers claim that “Media and communication technologies seem to play a determining role in the processes of cultural transformation that involves the reinvention and redefinition of cultural identity […] media use among diasporic communities seems to play a fundamental role in the construction of everyday spaces in which experiences and identities are constructed and negotiated.” (2007, p 175). With such an influential position, media has the chance, as Leeuw and Rydin concur, to attempt to overcome cultural exclusion and construct senses of home and belonging, based on the link between media use and identity construction. (2007, p 177).

Sawyer described television and political discourse as a ‘diasporic resource’ for black migrants in Sweden when creating identity and belonging in a new country. She states that “belonging is based on understandings of blackness that are not so much tied to a national or geographical space but relate instead to an experience of racialization as black and/or commodified mass media images circulating transnational that 'speak' or articulate this experience.” (2008, p 89). In this case, “diasporic resources include the specific images and symbols of black/African community circulating in the media - resources that can be strategically used (or not) as tools by people to create community and alternative understandings of self.” (Sawyer, 2008, p 92). It is clear that media plays a formative role as a diasporic resource when it comes to the migrant experience, therefore can have a significant impact on navigating belonging and identity formation.

The term ‘Boat People’ has been in political and media circulation in Australia since the 1976, when Vietnam War refugees arrived on Australian shores seeking asylum. (Phillips and Spinks, 2013). The formulation of this term, which I earlier described as a means to create a non-human Other, is also what Brah describes as the concept of deterritorialisation: “The concept of deterritorialisation is understood as describing the displacement and dislocation of identities, persons and meanings, with the moment of alienation and exile located in language and literature” (1996, p 200). ‘Boat People’ is a term that clearly uses the moment of exile to describe a group of people, rather than human circumstance or vulnerability. As we know, migrants use media as a formative diasporic resource, therefore the use of non-human, deterritorialising language constructs can be concluded as having a negative, even damaging impact on the migrant experience, by being seen by themselves and by citizens of the host country as less-than human, the Other, and criminal. 

 

‘Boat People’ Or people on boats? The power of language in media and beyond

The use of the term ‘Boat People’ not only circulated among the Australian population via news and political discourse, advertising took hold of the concept in an attempt to deliver humour and add the language of diversity to a national holiday, Australia Day. As a holiday that celebrates the colonization of Australia, the indigenous population simultaneously mark the day as a National Day of Mourning, due to the coinciding mass genocide of aboriginal people. With marches and protests taking place all over the country on Australia Day, Meat and Livestock of Australia (MLA) released its annual lamb campaign with the presentation of Australian colonisation as a party, concluding the 2.5-minute advertisement with the tag line: ‘wait, aren’t we all Boat People?’

In Sarah Ahmed’s book On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, she focuses on the veil of diversity and how the language of diversity is used to create the right image, “Statements like “we are diverse” or “we embrace diversity” might simply be what organisations say because that is what organisations are saying. We might call this the “lip service” model of diversity. It can be a way of maintaining rather than transforming existing organizational values.” (2012, p 57). This lip service is exactly what advertising is about, creating the look of diversity and acceptance while actually contributing to yet another form of othering. The MLA advertisement in particular, places many minority groups in a state of non-belonging, while also placing them in a position of invasion. For migrants to see themselves in this category could add to the feeling of non-belonging, despite lines in the ad that say ‘you’re welcome.’ This attempt to position an institution, such as MLA, as a spokesperson for an entire country, via the constructed tool of advertising, simply grates against the more trusted discourse of news and political spin. Ahmed describes this form of antiracism as white attribute or another form of whiteness. (2012, p 170). “Here, antiracism becomes a matter of generating a positive white identity that makes the white subject feel good.” (2012, p 170). Noting that the entire Board of Directors at MLA are white, this ad serves as a model for maintaining, rather than transforming, institutional values and power structures, using the migrant experience as a tool in doing so. 

This leads me to the important discussion of collective performativity, which is discussed by Brah in Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities, where she describes the insult and denigration implied in the word ‘Paki’ as feeling very real to her. “And this is not merely an issue about my individual personal sensitivities. It felt real, became part of my reality, precisely because its enunciation reiterated an inferiorised collective subject through me. That is to say, the power of the discourse was performed, was exercised through me, and, in other instances, through other ‘Asians’.” (1996, pp 10-11). This expectation of performativity is placed on non-white migrants, despite their citizenship, when language is used to frame a collective as inferior to the ‘norm’. Brah’s discussion on performativity links with Ahmed’s discussion on rightful occupants, where she discusses “how emotions of fear and hatred stick to certain bodies; how some bodies become understood as rightful occupants of certain spaces.” (2012, p 2). These two insights can lead us to see the relationship between language and stranger making, the way in which language can create an expectation of performativity, and if this expectation is one of non-belonging, then how can we expect refugees or migrants to feel anything other than strangers in a new land? 

In his article, Stop the boats? Stop the propaganda! Hardaker makes mention of Prime Minister Howard’s famous quote, “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come,” saying that it worked powerfully on those who suspected “filthy foreigners were trying to overtake good upstanding Australians.” He relates the political and media rhetoric around ‘Boat People’ as “borrowing from the playbook of the Nazis […] them who have declared war on ‘the alien’.” (2013). This formative look at language and the manipulations of it to create a non-human Other is what Hardaker calls “[the] practice of the black art of propaganda, which is despicable and verges on the evil. It comes from those clever enough to know the power of language to manipulate and immoral enough to care little of the consequences.” (2013).

The forces of language and mass communicated media rhetoric certainly play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion, contributing to feelings of belonging or not belonging among the migrant community. As an important diasporic resource, media is shaping the identity of the people who view it. The media regulatory bodies have a role to play in creating policy around language and imagery that perpetuate racist ideologies, as do writers, project managers, art directors, producers, etc. Perhaps that is not so easy when the entire media landscape of Australia is owned by a handful of white, rich males (and one female) who control the lay of the land, so to speak.

 

It’s no coincidence we call it ‘spelling’, language casts a spell. So, what if we are the wizards?

For those of us who contribute to, or even create, mass distributed language, the onus is upon us. Our continued education into the impact of our craft should be mandatory. We should be aware that we are not only writing for our ‘intended audience’, as the buzz words go, but we could be developing diasporic resources, tools that directly impact a sense of belonging and/or identity.

To conclude with a quote from Fataneh Farahani who states that “one’s feelings of at-home-ness can even enhance the physical, social, intellectual and emotional spaces that s/he inhabits. Simply put, privileged positions give birth to extended privileged positions and the other way around. That is, unprivileged conditions also generate extended un-privileging positions and circumstances that further unsettle and bring discomfort to non-normative scholarly subjects.” (2015, pp 4). If mass distributed language and media discourse can impact, and even create, a feeling of belonging (or, as Farahani puts it, at-home-ness) or not belonging, then the gravity of this topic needs to be placed on the forefront of the public agenda; however, the agenda seems to be fixed on maintaining current privileged and power structures, rather than enhancing the spaces we all share with feelings of belonging for the most vulnerable. Let’s start with the tool we always have at our disposal, our words (and our Twitter accounts).

References:

Al-Ali, Nadia & Khalid, Koser 2002. Transnationalism, International Migration and Home. In: New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home, Nadia Al-Ali and Khalid Koser (eds.). London: Routledge.

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Brah, Avtar 1996. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London and New York: Routledge.

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Farahani, Fataneh 2015. Home and Homelessness and Everything in between: A Route from One Uncomfortable Zone to another One, European Journal of Women’s Studies.

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