“I Feel It in My Body, in My Soul, in My Mind”: Journalism, Racist News and Immigrants’ Experience of Belonging

Abstract

ABSTRACT We know that journalism, and particularly news, has an essential function in society and politics and that it shapes our understanding of reality. Yet, we fail to recognize its far-reaching implications on the lived experience of those who consume it. This article contributes towards addressing this gap by examining the response of individuals with an immigrant background to racist representations of immigrants in Norwegian news during the Covid-19 pandemic. It involved 21 in-depth interviews that mapped how the coverage both was entwined with and refracted through the participants’ emotions, embodied and situated experiences, impacting their sense of belonging in Norwegian society. The analysis demonstrates the devastating reverberations of racist news discourse on all domains of an immigrant’s life: far from merely providing information, news profoundly affects an immigrant’s sense of safety, health and well-being, and feeling (or not) “at home.” The study has relevance beyond the Norwegian case and the timeframe of the pandemic in so far as it moves beyond existing research about “news effects” and “audience studies.” Theoretically it conceptualizes news as both elemental and existential. Methodologically, it approaches it as woven into the experience of immigrants rather than as an external influence on it.