| dc.description.abstract | A basic assumption for this thesis is that minorities and majorities must recognise each other as equals in order to achieve egalitarian ethnic relations in a society.
Through its interpretations of reality, the media possess the power to present the relations between immigrants and Norwegians as more or less equal. In this thesis, I analyse how news items on immigrants and immigrant-related matters are presented by the national public service broadcasters in Norway (TV2 and NRK). The study is conducted on the basis of a two-fold approach. Firstly, I conduct a content analysis of immigrant related news items over a five week period. The objective is to obtain general knowledge on the scope and content of such items. Secondly, through a textual analysis of the news items, I investigate the extent to which immigrants [as such] are recognised or marginalised. Finally, I discuss the relations between the media's representations of immigrant-related matters and the general position of immigrants in the Norwegian society.
My study reveals that immigrant related matters have become an important topic in the news. In particular, this applies to matters relating to asylum-seekers and refugees. However, items related to immigrants already established in the Norwegian society, constitute a much smaller part of the coverage. Further, the study reveals that Norwegian authorities, including politicians, are over-represented as sources with respect to immigrant matters. In particular, this applies to news items concerning asylum-seekers and refugees. In some cases, immigrants are recognised as interviewees, thus given the opportunity to define their subjective interests. My general impression is that immigrants appear as subordinated to Norwegians in the news media. The willingness to utilise immigrants as sources indicate a desire to recognise, however, immigrants are marginalised because Norwegians in all but a few cases defines the news topic. On the basis of the above findings, the representation of immigrants in news items seems somewhat ambivalent. In an ideological perspective the ambivalence might be interpreted as a tension between humanitarian and self-fulfilling interests. | eng |