“A European Public Sphere is Emerging That Has Long Been Missed”

What should journalists pay attention to at the moment when reporting on Ukrainian refugees?

Many people are traumatized by the war in Ukraine. Journalists speaking to refugees right now need to be aware that they can trigger re-traumatization or intensify the trauma through their questions alone. Our handbook provides concrete advice for such interview situations. At the same time, of course, international journalists reporting from Ukraine are also exposed to the risk of becoming traumatized. Many companies meanwhile offer qualified and professional help for Western correspondents. We will have to create such an offer for our Ukrainian colleagues once the fighting has ended.

What are you observing in German media?

Reporting here in Germany is currently very much focused on individuals – on the people exposed to the war, both within Ukraine and on their flight from their homeland. In my opinion, the media are responding very constructively here to the criticism that arose after the 2015/16 refugee crisis. Back then, the refugees were often only visible in the media as a vast, anonymous group, reports predominantly centered on political stakeholders – this can also be seen in a comparative pan-European study we undertook in 2019. This is now noticeably different. But we also know from previous studies that the closer the events in the “news geography” are taking place to one’s own country, the more differentiated reporting on flight and migration is.

Ukraine was already at the center of international attention in 2014 due to the armed conflict and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. What scientific insights have you gathered concerning the reaction of European media at that time?

Back then, we conducted a comparative analysis of media in Western and Eastern Europe within the network of our European Journalism Observatory. To our surprise, the study showed that the armed conflict in 2014 was sooner a peripheral topic in some post-Soviet countries too, such as Latvia and the Czech Republic – which themselves were suppressed by Moscow for decades. For Southern European countries as well, the conflict at that time was “a long way away”. That is now fundamentally different. Because of the threatening situation, a European public sphere is suddenly emerging on a previously unknown scale – and which has long been missed by communication studies too. Furthermore, reporting at that time focused strongly on Putin as a person – we’re seeing that pattern again now.

UNESCO handbook “Reporting on Migrants and Refugees”

Researchers from the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism (EBI) at TU Dortmund University have spent the last six years compiling a handbook entitled “Reporting on Migrants and Refugees” for UNESCO. This was the first time that a UNESCO handbook, which sets the standards for journalism education worldwide, was compiled by a German journalism institute. The handbook, which is about 300 pages long, was published in 2021 and is based on extensive scientific analyses by the team from TU Dortmund University and numerous international conferences and workshops related to reporting on migration and flight – in the destination countries of migrants and refugees as well as in their countries of origin and the transit countries.
 

UNESCO handbook “Reporting on Migrants and Refugees”

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