This thesis aims to answer the research questions when does the word immigrant become a salient political issue. Migration and the immigrant have never been a more pressing issue to solve, and with...Show moreThis thesis aims to answer the research questions when does the word immigrant become a salient political issue. Migration and the immigrant have never been a more pressing issue to solve, and with current global trajectories they are likely to become even more central to international politics in the years to come. Academic literature remains adamant on finding the explanatory factor(s) for why and how the immigrant is politicised through political language, and from the perspective of understanding this political polarisation for the sake of preventing the harm to immigrants, this is an important and worthwhile pursuit. But this thesis argues that the Faroe Islands are a deviant case, as it contains all the common quantifiable explanatory metrics, yet immigration is not politicised. This contradicts the common correlative theories and instead connects the politicisation of immigration to the fundamental aspect of being a sovereign state and argues that the duty of discussing the phenomenon of immigration necessitates the words to define the debate, and it is the introduction of these words into the common sphere that sharpens, and therefore politicises, the immigration topic.Show less
After the Paris attacks on November 13th, 2015, the French government sought to implement counter-terrorism strategic communications amongst other counter-radicalization measures. These measures...Show moreAfter the Paris attacks on November 13th, 2015, the French government sought to implement counter-terrorism strategic communications amongst other counter-radicalization measures. These measures were focused on media-based campaigns, which included several social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and an educational website launched by the government: stop-dijhadisme.gouv.fr. This thesis focuses on one particular anti-jihadist media campaign called: #Toujourslechoix. The campaign was launched in November 2016 and although it is no longer being showcased across French educational institutions, till today the visual campaign is still used as a means to spread awareness and can easily be found on the government’s counter-radicalization website. Although the campaign received praise for reaching a large audience, the effectiveness of the campaign as an actual measure to combat radicalization remains contested. The debate surrounding counter-radicalization measures revolves around whether they are deemed effective, Islamophobic or simply ineffective, however scholars fail to address the reason as to why these measures, particularly these visual campaigns, are still being implemented. This thesis proposes to analyze the case study from the perspective of visual framing theory to answer the research question. This theory can successfully explain how social actors use visual frames to communicate certain messages. As such, this thesis argues that by using secondary frames the French government in fact always targets two audiences through two objectives: the first objective being that these visual campaigns should prevent a certain audience to radicalize and the second objective consists of the government also aiming to reassure the French population that the government is taking political action to combat Jihadism in France through these programs. The frames that the French government utilized serve the purpose of achieving these two aforementioned objectives. By using visual methods to analyze the two interactive governmental videos, this thesis will seek to reveal the first and second frames the government uses and will primarily highlight the secondary audience. This thesis concludes that although the primary target audience is the French Muslim community, visual indicators point towards the secondary audience being the non-Muslims of France, who have criticized the government for not implementing harsher counter-radicalization measures.Show less
In 2020 the monoethnic Perikatan Nasional coalition seized power from the multi-ethnic Pakatan Harapan coalition, resulting in a reversal of societal progress towards a more multicultural Malaysia....Show moreIn 2020 the monoethnic Perikatan Nasional coalition seized power from the multi-ethnic Pakatan Harapan coalition, resulting in a reversal of societal progress towards a more multicultural Malaysia. This development mimics the rise of populism within Europe, and thus warranted investigation to see if current understandings of European populism could explain this phenomenon in Malaysia. This study utilised discourse analysis to examine the coalition manifestos and member-party political rhetoric of the key Malaysian political coalitions from 2015 to 2020, establishing that Pakatan Harapan is the sole populist coalition consisting of non-populist parties. Pakatan Harapan was formed as a response to the widespread corruption of the previous ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, thus once they had gained power the divisions between its member-parties proved too great for the coalition to survive, resulting in the creation of Perikatan Nasional. This study refutes previous research that claimed populism was not feasible within Southeast Asia, providing evidence that such movements are not only possible but exist within the region.Show less
