BOTH A HOT TOPIC AND A HOT BUTTON: MIGRANTS, SECURITY, ECONOMY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY VIA UKRAINIAN TOP MEDIA

Анотація

Due to rapid informatisation and excessive media consumption, the media continue
to shape public opinion as the agents of ‘soft power’. The authors of the article conducted
a study of media coverage of migrants and migration in accordance with the logic of
sociological discourse analysis based on a sample of fi fteen leading Ukrainian media. In
the period from 2015 to 2018, the greatest attention of the researched media was focused
on the relevant topic in a broad sense, without detailing certain types of migration, and
the labor migrants were the least interesting for the media. Qualitative content analysis
of media texts of every second month in each year from 2015 to 2018 showed that
the positive presented hidden meanings of media messages characterised migrants as
people who were protected from various threats or were just looking for quiet life; also
those meanings emphasised the absence of the threats of social divisions’ as well as
terrorist attacks and bad behavior, highlighted the positive economic consequences and
the dignity of migrated workers and the successful migrants’ assimilation of the required
level, etc. The negative presented hidden meanings of media messages convinced that
migrants supported terrorists, threatened the lives of other people, cheated and violated
the law, became victims of robbery and exploitation, were uncontrolled in their numbers,
contributed to the destruction of the economy, experienced diffi culties with empowerment
or language or integration regarding their values, etc. At the same time, there was no 

category of migrants, which was described by any media type as an exclusively ‘good’
one, but, in total, both positive and negative consequences of migration were most often
broadcasted by private television channels. An important conclusion of the authors’ was
the fi nding that, in terms of means, the media coverage of migrants and migration was
about both attracting the attention of Ukrainians with allusion to their life priorities and
refl ecting their values through the media.
Keywords: media discourse, migration, sociological discourse analysis, hidden
meanings.