2024/01/23 by Anya Jhoti, William Allen · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Global Security and Public Health #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Social Media and Politics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/14614448231220856
openalex publication_date 2024/01/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Theories of symbolic bordering highlight how xenophobic media coverage and humanitarian messaging create boundaries between migrants and receiving communities partly based on deservingness. Contrasting with studies of mainly text-based representations of refugees, we examine refugee-serving organizations’ visual communications work on Instagram. Using a discourse-centered online ethnographic approach, we collected 191 posts made in early 2021 by five UK-based organizations. Then, we applied quantitative content and qualitative semiotic analysis to these posts, complemented by two semi-structured interviews with communications staff members. We show how visual choices invoke divisions between posts’ refugee subjects and their intended audiences, while rendering some refugees legible and particularly worthy of protection or empathy. These choices include using stereotypical elements, obscuring identifiable people, and explicitly attributing quotations to refugees. We also identify “takeover” posts where refugees had controlled organizations’ social media accounts. Our study contributes understanding of how symbolic bordering occurs visually online and has implications for humanitarian communications practice.