Against the backdrop of current social challenges, the network focused on the following research questions:
- How do the media grasp the different forms of migration; what narratives and images emerge in local, national, transnational and international communication processes?
- What social self-understandings are renegotiated – for instance, the claim or rejection of being an immigration country or an “immigration society”?
- To what extent are what actors and actors’ networks part of communicative construction processes and can shape discourses due to their position of power?
- What forms and formats shape the reception of migration events and the related social challenges?
- How is the perception of space and “locations”, which are challenged by migration movements and increasing cross-border communication options, renegotiated?
- How do the media adapt historical references and use them (communication about the past /uses of the past)? What role do memories about past migrations play for the social negotiation of current migrations?
The project aimed on a subsequent application on a European level in order to ensure a sustainable research network. Thereby, it expanded existing contacts to colleagues in the fields of communication and media science as well as media history and contemporary history of the universities in Lund, Aarhus and Jyväskylä systematically to a sustainable network of partner institutions in the Baltic Sea Region.
"Media and Migration in the Baltic Sea Region" (MeMiBaS) was funded by the Landesforschungsförderung Hamburg [Hamburg Research Funding] with Seed Money until 30 May 2018.