Pushed to the Edge. Research Report on the Representation of Roma Communities in the Hungarian Majority Media, 2011

The paper discusses results of a content analysis investigating the coverage of Roma by the Hungarian mainstream media in 2011. Political dailies, weekly papers, tabloid dailies, internet news portals, and TV news programs with the largest audience share were analyzed. Special attention was paid to the analysis of visual images portrayed in newspapers and TV news programs. The design of the research was such, that data are comparable with earlier content analyses conducted by the authors in 1988, 1993, 1997, 2000, therefore the research allows for tracking changes in the media coverage of Roma retrospectively. The report demonstrates how the portrayal of Roma became increasingly dominated by the stereotype of criminality since 1993 and also how mainstream political discourse monopolized the media space with respect to Roma issues. The analysis also mapped processes by which the agenda and language of the extreme right was channeled into the mainstream political and media discourse, and by which the human rights approach to Roma has almost completely disappeared from the media coverage since the late 1990s. The analysis also highlights those practices by which visual images serving as background to news reports reinforced interethnic distance and majority stereotypes about Roma.