The strategies of othering in media representations: theory and method of content analysis

There are many examples in the history of Western culture of how some of the social groups perceived as 'Other' - strange, wild, irrational, alien or threatening to social order. They appeared as objects of subordination in the process of certain cultural policy that is divided social space into the "center" and "periphery", polarizing into the "us" and "them". The status of some increased by reducing the status of the Other. Different groups can be attributed as Other in modern society, for example: ethnic and sexual minorities, people with disabilities, migrants, poor, that exclude from the "normal values of Western culture" (Spivak, 1999). Social cohesion is questionable, because the society breaks up into different fragments influenced by efforts to protect the group boundaries. The objectives of this paper include the study of discursive mechanisms that are used for the division of "ours" from "aliens" and leading to objectification and subordination of the Others. At the beginning, based on the analysis of theoretical and empirical sources were identified certain signs, indicating in the text the presence of alienation process. Next, according to these attributes was created the program of content analysis of media representations of vulnerable groups, for example, migrants. As a result, it was found that migrants depicted in press as Other. Their images are characterized by signs of alienation: the opposition (using binary categories "locals-newcomers"), hierarhization and subordination ("hosts-guests''), desubjectivation (migrants are the "workforce"). In sum, the preliminary results of the analysis show that the official press is dominated by representation on behalf of the government, officials. There are no publications that describe the subjective experience of migrants. There is a neglect for cultural uniqueness and personality characteristics of migrants, which leads to perception of them in terms of economic value as a "workforce", more than in the discourses of equality and values diversity.

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