Abstract (eng)
During the Cold War, Austria managed to earn itself a reputation as a country of asylum for refugees. This reputation was increasingly questioned by politics and society since the 1990s. The accommodation of refugees from the former state of Yugoslavia was accompanied by the tightening of the Austrian laws of asylum and an intensification of the political discourse. Similar developments can be observed concerning the accommodation of Syrian refugees in the course of the military escalation of the war in Syria. This thesis deals with the coverage of the Austrian newspapers Die Presse und Kronen Zeitung and tries to compare the journalistic discourse about refugees from former Yugoslavia with the discourse about refugees from Syria. Main aspect of this thesis is the context in which refugees are covered by the media. Furthermore, the thesis tries to outline the difference between the coverage of quality- and tabloid newspapers.
The theoretical part of this thesis contains an overview of migration studies, the central studies of communication science on “media and migration” or “media and asylum” are introduced. In addition, there is an overview of international and Austrian asylum policy, as well as a description of the relevant legal regulations, before the Post-Yugoslavian wars and the war in Syria are considered closer.
The empirical part of the paper examined 180 articles of the daily newspapers Die Presse and Kronen Zeitung by applying the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring. Furthermore, a total of 1399 newspaper articles was analyzed as part of an empirical examination. The results of the thesis show a change within the journalistic discourse about refugees: while refugees were considered from a foreign policy perspective in the 1990s, journalists interpret refugees as a domestic and economic "problem" in the 2010s. In addition, news coverage is often accompanied by the use of a derogatory or negative language that, while more present in the 1990s, is also frequently used by journalists within the 2010s.