CROSSING BORDERS ON THE BALKAN ROUTE: REPRESENTATION OF MIGRATION IN ONLINE NEWS

Abstract

This research studies the headlines representing migrants along the Balkan route in Bulgarian online news during the “migrant crisis” of 2015/2016, as well as the pictorial images that immediately follow the headlines. It compares the verbal and the visual representation of migrants and applies both critical discourse analysis and multimodal analysis. The study uses the term ‘text’ in a wider sense including both the verbal text and the pictorial display of migrants’ social activities. The headlines develop two contradicting images of the migrants which are also reflected in the pictures. One of them is the image of poor and distressed people running away from the war in their home country. Europe for them is the Promised Land and they are presented with sympathy and compassion. The other image of the migrants is that of a natural disaster which cannot be stopped by country borders and threatens the stability on the continent.

Keywords

• migrants
• headlines
• multimodality
• conceptual metaphors
• visual representation