The impact of media on asylum seekers' sense of belonging

Dr Siobhan Holohan, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, recently spoke at the Social Media and Society Conference held in Copenhagen between 18-21 July. The paper, titled ‘Negotiating citizenship: social media use among asylum seekers in the UK’, presented findings from a BA/Leverhulme funded project (with Dr Natalie Soleiman) that seeks to examine how asylum seekers make sense of media discourses about immigration against their precarious citizenship status. Preliminary analysis of the findings suggests that while people in the asylum system are aware of the stigmatising narratives surrounding immigration contained in much mainstream media, they can offset or sometimes transform these discourses via ‘active research’ on social media. By taking charge of the way that they use media, our participants are able to mitigate the effects that dominant discourses about asylum seekers may have on their sense of belonging in the UK. The paper is part of a series of dissemination events from the project, which will conclude with a one-day workshop at Keele University in May 2019.