// M02 Group Project.

As a group we have to consolodate and attempt to answer the following question:

¹Newspapers tend to portray ²asylum seekers and refugees negatively, we are concerned that this ³portrayal has an impact upon how ⁴“ordinary” people treat all ⁵non-white people in Britain.

With our consolodation of the above question we need to take into consideration the following points:

1. Which Newspapers are we going to use, also how many should we include in our analysis? I believe we should limit ourselves to just two newspapers as otherwise we shall have too much work. Newspapers which are most interesting to what we are doing are The Sun and The Guardian.
2. What do we mean by asylum seekers or refugees and what do the newspapers mean when they refer to them. We need to seperate the two terms from imigration which newspapers appear to be linking them with. Imigration, asylum seekers and refugees are three seperate groups of people, are mass media placing them in one group to other them?
3. How are the articles that we have found portraying the aforementioned groups of people? How does this tell readers what to think? Is there an excess of hyperbole and what does that do to the connotations within the article?
4. “Ordinary” people could mean anyone, we need to focus on one selection of people. They must be British for simplicity and we should focus on the poor working class contrasted with the wealthy middle class. Are we going to focus on the Elderly whom appear to be most predisposed to racism or the younger generation, I think we could include both within the equation however this will have to be a response to our research into the newspapers we choose and their target reader-base.
5. Non-White people is the group that news papers appear to place asylum seekers and refugees, but within this group there are also Non-White people British born and tourists. How does this stereotyping affect them?

It is useful for us that our group is multi-cultural because it gives us a wider view upon the subject. After this first meeting we have concluded that The Sun and The Guardian are the two newspapers which we shall look into. In response to item four we shall have to research into the two newspapers reader-base to determine who may be affected before we can look into who they are and how they are affected. Also before the next meeting we need to determine what we mean by racism and the terms used within section two.

The BBC article TV shows link to teen pregnancies could be useful as it analyses a similar theme to the one we are working with while being a different subject. The two chosen newspapers are helpful because their online websites allow for reader feedback which is then published, so we can find out how its readers are reacting to the articles.

Useful Links:

Max Farrar Accedemic Work