Track for the 4th Turkish Migration Conference
July 12-15, 2016, University of Vienna, Austria
Track Chairs: Katharine Sarikakis and Deniz Özalpman, University of Vienna, Austria
Organized by Regent's Centre for Transnational Studies, London, and the Media Governance & Industries Research Lab at the University of Vienna, this track aims to bring together a variety of approaches to help us better understand the dis/connections of communication rights of the world citizens experiencing forced mobility.
While the so called "refugee crisis" became a 'code' for European media and politicians to describe the extraordinary movement of people toward the continent, people on the move have inadvertently caused 'Europe' to come face to face with its strength to uphold Human Rights and Communication Rights for protecting the vulnerable and its weakness to act in such a way. Potent images have raised old ethical questions of journalistic practices, but at the same time have exposed the concrete impact of policies on people's lives – and deaths. While the media and journalists are finding themselves challenged to report on human tragedy and human agency, 'staying neutral' has become an impossible and possibly ethically questionable task. On the one hand, people on the move are being reported on in terms of natural catastrophe metaphors; on the other stories of survival and death aim to humanise the numbers of people seeking refuge. The paper in this track document, analyse, speculate and interrogate the journey, destination and experience of communication from all possible perspectives that is connected with people’s rights to be granted protection and their human rights to be respected.
First Panel: Beyond Borders: Constructing and maintaining communicative spaces
Chair: Katharine Sarikakis
Second Panel: Seeking Refuge and the Media
Chair: Deniz Özalpman