Prejudices, marginalization and discrimination against Syrian refugees who hadto leave their country because of the civil war erupted in 2011 have increased astheir stay in Turkey is protracted. Studies carried out by various persons and in-stitutions revealed that negative perceptions and discriminatory practices thatcaused exclusion of the refugees is closely related to the negative ‘Syrian’ imagecreated in media along with other social factors.30 This report, which is issued ina time when hate speech, discriminatory assumptions and even violent actionsagainst Syrians are on the rise, analyzes how distortion, claims and misinforma-tion in news articles concerning Syrian refugees incite and spread discriminationagainst those people.This report is based on data and findings that were obtained through mediascanning work carried out as part of the “Media Watch on Hate Speech” proj-ect. During the monitoring process, it was found that majority of discourses tar-geting Syrians contains incorrect and/or incomplete information, decontextual-ized statements, unfounded claims and distortions. Thus, firstly, the contextsin which such news material contributing to spread of discriminatory discourseagainst Syrians increase in number are determined and categorized under thetitles “citizenship,” “economy,” “family life,” “education” and “crime”. Then,articles and columns covering these issues published in 2017 in national and localnewspapers were scanned. Moreover, given the fact that distortions and misin-formation spread on social media faster and more commonly, striking examplesof social media entries from 2017 are also included in the report.
The report opens with an article by Şenay Özden who does research on immigra-tion and migration. The article discusses the legal status of Syrians, the ‘guest’discourse concerning Syrian refugees and how the discourse constitutes an ob-stacle to a rights-based approach to refugees. After, the common features of thenews articles in which the presence of refugees is presented as a problem andspreading discriminatory judgements are summarized. Following that, the ex-amples that create a distorted ‘Syrian’ image are analyzed in three groups. In thefirst group, the articles that are reproducing the statements of political figureswho have the power of affecting public opinion, using Syrians as a political toolare analyzed. In the second part, articles that mark Syrians as the cause of so-cial and economic problems by concealing the actual reason are analyzed. In thethird part, media’s role in the atmosphere of ‘fear,’ which is created by repeat-edly associating Syrian identity with crime in articles covering criminal incidentsis discussed. After the analyses of selected articles adopting a rights-based ap-proach, the report ends with conclusion and evaluation chapters.
You can see the report on "Discrimination against Syrian Refugees in Media: Misinformation and Distortion" on pages 103-140 in "Hate Speech and Discriminatory Discourse in Media 2017" report.
