Abstract
The article describes the way in which the Italian daily newspapers represent and construct the image of Slavic ethnicity (EU member states only). The aim is to provide the general insight into the image the Italians have about the Slavic countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) in order to observe whether there are some fixed patterns of presenting these countries/nations in Italian daily newspaper. For the purpose of this study, the corpus of newspaper articles containing terms related to the names of the countries involved in the analysis is used. Newspaper articles were obtained from the digital version of Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica and they include all the articles in the period of six months, i.e. from 1st June 2016 to 31st December 2016. Once the occurrences are identified, the categorical apparatus is established to analyse the articles according to the topic and the position within the article. The quantitative analysis was applied and the empirical results were presented.
Highlights
Through their either implicit or explicit activities, media contents in contemporary societies, mainly considered an essential source of information and knowledge, manage to construct the public opinion via choosing particular content and particular fashions of their presentation, discovering simultaneously different perspectives in observation and different patterns of thought
The aim of this work is to provide the general insight into the image the Italians have about the SEUMS in order to observe whether there are some fixed patterns of presenting these countries/nations in Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica and to determine potential similarities and differences in their presence and in the “portrayal”
Other Slavic countries represent less than 0.5% of the total number of foreign residents: Croatia with 18,050 citizens (0.36%), Slovakia with 8,505 residents (0.17%), Czech Republic with 5,805 residents (0.12%); Slovenia with 2,564 citizens dwelling in Italy is the least numerous country.[8]
Summary
Through their either implicit or explicit activities, media contents in contemporary societies, mainly considered an essential source of information and knowledge, manage to construct the public opinion via choosing particular content and particular fashions of their presentation, discovering simultaneously different perspectives in observation and different patterns of thought. The specific ability to influence the salience of both topics and their images among the public has been called the agenda-setting role[1] of the news media (McCombs & Reynolds, 2002). Different studies point to the importance of the media in shaping European image surrounding different ethnicities.[2] we consider it important to have an idea about how Slavic EU Member States ‒ SEUMS3 are portrayed in the news. Explicit forms of discrimination in European news are hardly seen nowadays, the broad generalizations and lack of background information are still widespread practices across the news media
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
