Audience Responses to Migration Stories: Research Component of Voices of African Migrants

"A key finding of this research is that context matters."

The media's responses to migration challenges shape and reflect public discourses and understandings of migration and migrant experiences. This report was commissioned to examine the nature and quality of media stories produced by journalists supported by the Voices of African Migrants website pilot programme in 3 of 4 migration "hubs" in Africa, also exploring how local audiences interpreted and responded to those stories.

Funded by the Ford Foundation, Voices of African Migrants is managed by International Media Support (IMS), a non-profit organisation that works to support local media in countries affected by armed conflict, human insecurity, and political transition. The pilot programme explored how media development approaches could be deployed to make a positive impact on public debates relating to migration in local and regional centres in Africa, each of which has different migration patterns. According to IMS, current reporting in the region tends to be negative and to exclude migrant voices. The intended outcome of the training and mentoring for journalists is described as enabling professional journalists to "produce ethical, professional and in-depth reporting of migration issues integrating voices of migrants into journalistic stories".

Not intended to be an evaluation of the pilot, this research involved analysis of the media content produced by participating journalists, with attention to the contexts of their production. The researchers used a mix of inductive and deductive coding to analyse the journalistic frames used, the informational sources and their treatment in the stories, and the themes included in the narratives relating to experiences of migration, descriptions of migrants, and causes (see Appendix 2 for details). The research methodology had an ethnographic component in that it:

• combined an interest in not just what was produced, but also in the contexts in which these media stories are produced, circulated, received, and interpreted;
• paid attention not only to the media content, but also to the social, structural, and political contexts in which journalists produce their work and journalistic texts are consumed by audiences;
• examined the reception of content through focus groups (FGs) with potential audiences, also seeking to understand how gender and age influence meaning-making processes; and
• sought to understand how migrants themselves respond to and interpret representations of their own "voices".

Specifically, one week of fieldwork was undertaken in the Western Africa Hub (Niamey, Niger), the Northern Africa Hub (Casablanca, Morocco), and the Southern Africa Hub (Harare, Zimbabwe). Five FGs were held: men only, women only, older people, younger people, and migrants (see Appendix 5 for the FG guide). During the week of fieldwork, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with an average of 2 participating journalists per Hubwere undertaken. (Appendix 6 includes the interview guide).

The research found that most stories used human interest frames and foregrounded migrant experiences. The migrants' main contributions to the stories were to provide a human face to hardships and suffering. Meanwhile, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were included to provide facts, statements of general causes of migrations, statistics, and a sense of scale. Government statements were used to provide a comment on policies and solutions. Most articles were supportive in their sentiments to the plight of migrants.

Participants in the FGs (especially migrants themselves) recognised that migrant voices were missing from mainstream media reporting on migration, that reporting on migration tends to be negative, and that there are pressing issues relating to migration that need to be discussed in the public sphere. FG participants generally responded with empathy and understanding in response to stories about the hardships migrants face. Some stories provoked a distancing or disruption to understanding, especially when an aspect of the story did not match their prior tacit or cultural knowledge about migration. A small number of stories deeply moved FG participants. For example, a newspaper article that discusses the fate of young African men waiting to cross into Europe by using a unique narrative style (in the form of a letter) led one young Moroccan FG participant, who was outspokenly hostile to migrants, to say that it made him "feel closer to the suffering of migrants".

The 6 journalists interviewed were all appreciative and enthusiastic about the Voices of African Migrants programme. They emphasised that the training courses, which often included migration experts, and the mentoring they have received have increased their background knowledge and sensitivity for reporting on migration. They agreed that reporting on migration is important, and all seemed determined to continue to report on this matter after the end of the programme. The journalists were deeply aware of the social media use by their audiences and tapped into this. A Nigerien journalist has set up a website to collect reactions. Accessibility was also of concern, and in Niger, the radio shows were both available online and broadcast in different languages, making these more widely accessible.

The report unpacks how an emphasis on "voice" in this context can inadvertently lead to an under-interrogation of systemic and structural issues by individualising, and in some cases, perpetuating a representation of migrants as helpless victims. On the other hand, particularly when seeking to tell a positive story, there is a risk of implying that successful migrants are exceptions - or even propaganda - and/or that the burden to integrate is on the migrant.

Best practices identified from the programme include:

• Use existing resources to help identify sensitive terminology for reporting about migration.
• Respect audiences as knowledgeable and discerning.
• Avoid thinking in dichotomies (especially "positive" and "negative" stories).
• Be aware of the consequences of individualising migrant voices and ignoring systemic and structural factors.
• Unpack the local context as much and as accurately as possible.
• Use accessible, sharable, and in-depth media forms that people trust.
• Continue supporting local journalists to write informed stories about migration.