By Farah Ali, author of Policy, Media, and the Shaping of Spain-Morocco Relations

Media discourse in the 21st century has reached a level of ubiquity that no longer requires going out of one’s way to catch a glimpse of what is going on in the world. Computers and phones deliver breaking news notifications. Our online engagement is tracked and used to generate subsequent news and notifications that are tailored to fit our personal interests and social concerns. The news has also become ever-present on social media platforms, with stories popping up on our feeds either because they were shared by our connections or because we were caught in a net casted by an algorithm.

Yet how much of that news are we (un)consciously taking in? Whether it is because of the constant influx of news, or possibly the decreased attention span that seems to be a by-product of the internet age, or even the fact that there are simply so many media outlets broadcasting so many different stories, our intake of media discourse is often characterized by quick blips about what is happening in the world. An attention-grabbing headline. Quickly skimming an article, our minds snagging on keywords and buzzwords. However, what we seldom notice when engaging with media discourse is (a) the many participants involved in the production of that news piece, and (b) the ideologies communicated that often shape our own attitudes and beliefs about the world around us.

On the surface, the goal of the news is simple: report on local, national, and/or world affairs that the public is entitled to know about. Media discourse, however, has many moving parts that often obfuscate this simple goal. Many news outlets latently or overtly represent political interests and involve both active and passive participants that engage with media discourse: there are the producers of texts and the parties whose interests they may represent, individuals or groups who are the focus of news stories, and consumers of news. Yet even with all of these different participants involved in the production and subsequent engagement with a news piece, media discourse is presented to us as a one-sided monologue, leaving the most sizable group of participants—the consumers—in a passive recipient role. Outside of leaving comments for a story on a news outlet’s website, our subsequent reactions to the news do not involve dialogue with the aforementioned participants. With this in mind, media discourse and those producing it wield significant power in shaping consumers’ ideologies, even if it is not entirely conspicuous or instantaneous. A single article on its own is relatively insignificant. Rather, the power of media is brandished iteratively, through repetition in its positioning of subject matters of a news piece. It is thus a cumulative effect, to construct consumers’ ideologies and attitudes. As such, the media can be a powerful tool for maintaining the status quo or for catalyzing social change.

There are a myriad of topics that the media reports on that merit critical exploration. In my own research, for instance, I am interested in discourse about migration and borders, since the media is notorious for representing migrants as threats to national security and social cohesion through an ‘us vs. them’ narrative, thereby justifying the militarization of border spaces and giving rise to xenophobia. Migration itself is an intricate process: people have various motives for migrating, and migration involves a variety of participants, as well as movement through different spaces in which individuals often face marginalization at the hands of those that have the power to control their mobility. Using the cities of Ceuta and Melilla as a case study in my most recent book, Policy, Media, and the Shaping of Spain-Morocco Relations, I examine how Spanish and Moroccan media represent undocumented migration to these Spanish cities that are located in Morocco. One of the most significant patterns I found was the frequent use of dehumanizing discourse—particularly among Spanish news articles—that cast migrants as a threat. This is evident through the pervasiveness of monolithic and reductive descriptors, such as nearly always referring to migrants as ‘Sub-Saharan’ rather than naming their countries of origin. This iterative process normalizes the idea of migrants being a nameless, faceless mass coming from a large, monolithic expanse of Africa. This is reinforced by metaphors used to compare migrants to natural disasters, such as ‘waves,’ ‘floods,’ and ‘avalanches.’ Not only do such descriptions reduce migrants to a homogenous group, they also portray them as being an aggressive and detrimental presence, thus feeding beliefs about migrants as a threat to society. Moreover, while media discourse dehumanizes migrants, it may simultaneously personify the borders by describing the act of crossing them as an ‘attack’ on the fences. Similarly, violent measures taken to block migration are often neutrally labeled as ‘dissuasive,’ which include measures such as razor wires on the tops of fences, as well as police shooting at unarmed individuals, resulting in injury or death. Such discourse, particularly when it is a common thread across many news articles from different sources, can have a hand in shaping how we view migration and those who migrate: a threat, an amorphous ‘other’ that is ‘not like us.’

Similarly, there is much to be said about what is not in the news: specific voices are excluded from reported conflicts, such as Palestinian voices among mainstream U.S. media in the coverage of the war on Gaza; there are numerous forgotten conflicts that the media no longer covers, such as the civil war in Myanmar and the displacement of Rohingya refugees. In these instances, that which is rendered invisible in public discourse also shapes our ideologies; we are told whom to forget, who to erase. Considering the substantial power of influence, it is essential that we take in media discourse with a critical eye. Who is publishing and whose interests do they serve? Whose voices are centered and whose are silenced? These are questions we need to be asking ourselves as we engage with media discourse. Through informed consumption, we can resist manipulation and empower ourselves to advocate for positive change.

Farah Ali is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, USA