Counteracting dominant discourses about migrations with images: A typology attempt

Abstract

This article examines a series of art and media images which contributed to counteracting dominant discourses about migrations. Through recourse to recent research in political science and psychology, it suggests that both the genre of the images and the very nature of their message, contribute shaping opinions and public policies. Specifically, it emphasises how the recurrence of certain motifs helps diffusing a feeling of anxiety about the migration 'crisis'. On this, this article updates the Funnel of Causality, a theoretical tool elaborated by political scientists to analyse votes behaviour that is now used to understand opinions to migrations (Dennison, 2017). In this scheme, the media effect, among which images play an increasing part, is heard to be of minor importance, whereas moral values appear to be crucial. The present article shows that these very values are fostered by emotions (Tappolet, 2000) which images, in particular images of fiction, are conveying.