Abandon or embrace: Functionalism perspective of photojournalists on Syrian refugees

Abstract

This research examines photojournalist’ perspectives of Syrian refugees in Europe, encoding, and dissemination processes. It employs a qualitative approach and functionalism perspective of mass media by sending questionnaires to voluntary respondents. The findings show sharing similar background and/or having experiences in the Middle Eastern countries highly influence the perspective of photojournalists on Syrian refugees. The encoding process covers through research of priority issues, target audience, trustworthiness of photos, and audience interpretation. The distribution method includes taking advantages of personal social media to promote the links of photos. As part of mass media industry, photojournalists play a crucial role to contribute to social integration, particularly, in creating a shared understanding between European community and Syrian refugees. The current research serves as a basis to future investigations on the perspective of European community towards Syrian refugees, whether or not their perspective is influenced by such photos.