Online Hate Speech and the Representations of Refugees in #VatanimdaMülteci (#RefugeeinMyCountry)

Introduction

The term “hate speech” is used for conversations that target specific groups according to their gender, race, sexual orientation, or religion and express a particular hatred toward them. While there is no fully agreed-upon convention on what constitutes the term, several attempts have been made to define it. Hate speech can be defined as “language that is used to express hatred towards a targeted group or is intended to be derogatory, to humiliate, or to insult the members of the group” (Davidson et al., 2017). The number of refugees is increasing at an accelerated pace across the world. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2021b), approximately 103 million people have been forced to flee their homes around the world as of today. Recently, European media and public discourse have increasingly categorised newcomers by using terminology such as “refugees” and “immigrants” (De Coninck, 2020). A refugee can be defined as a person who fears being persecuted because of their race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or political affiliation with a particular social group (United Nations, 1951). Because of their perilous and dangerous situation, they cross national borders to seek safety in nearby nations. Therefore, they are becoming internationally recognised as “refugees” with assistance from states and organisations such as UNHCR (UNHCR, 2016). Immigrants are people who moved based on their free will for personal comfort without the interference of an externally compelling cause such as a natural disaster or war (UNESCO, 2017). Unlike refugees, immigrants do not face any impediments and can return home safely. If immigrants choose to return to their homes, they will receive their 'government's protection (UNHCR, 2016).

Extensive research on the media coverage of immigrants has shown that the public discourses around migrants have become progressively simplistic, reductionist and harmful. Balch and Balabanova (2016) examined media coverage in the UK in 2006 and 2013 and found that despite the contributions of foreign nationals to the country's economy in the pre-research years, the UK news coverage had become more hostile, dismissive, and cynical towards immigrants. The European press started to frame the refugee and migrant crisis as “diversity” and “new arrivals” and categorised it as “vulnerable from outside” and “dangers from outside” in 2015. It has been observed that there is hate speech and a hostile attitude towards refugees and immigrants in the press of Eastern countries of Europe (Georgiou & Zaborowski, 2017). Similar findings have emerged in European countries, including Bulgaria and France, where hostile racial stereotyping and hate speech are indisputable and show how the immigration problem has been widely reported in recent years for example Bosev and Cheresehva (2015) and Marthoz (2017). According to White (2015), the media is framing the migration issue as a “threat” across the globe. Many politicians and parts of the mainstream media have treated immigrants as a never-ending wave of people who can steal other people's jobs, become a burden to the state, and ultimately threaten the indigenous population (White, 2015). Similar negative representations in the mass media toward the immigrant issue have been found in the African content. For instance, an analysis of Kenyan media coverage by Kisang (2017) revealed that immigrants are often framed as a threat to national security. Kisang (2017) found that immigrants are often represented as threats to national security in mainstream news, as they are associated with stories about terrorist attacks. Kariithi et al., (2017) showed that the South African media use broad and simple terms in general to describe immigrants and immigration.