Seeing Migration Narratives: Enhancing Decision Making Through Visualisation of Policy Debates for Civil Society and the Media

Migration and refugee issues are among the most complex and polarising policy challenges in the UK and globally. Media narratives on migration are perceived to have a significant impact on policy decisions and public attitudes toward migration. However the enormous number of media stories about migration, and the immense complexity of their diffusion around digital platforms make it impossible, using existing tools, to track and understand the relationship between different narratives, actors and sources in the debate. This creates space for the emergence of one-sided and misleading public debates, which can be exploited to generate discord and fear and lead to policy making that serves neither the national interest nor the interests of migrant and refugee communities.

This project will develop and apply novel techniques from natural language processing, machine learning, statistics, and data visualisation to: reveal the content and nature of digital discourse on migration; track the diffusion of different stories and concepts; demonstrate the reach of different voices in the debate. This will provide clear evidence of the sources of power and influence within the debate, and allow civil society actors, policy makers and journalists dealing with the issue to make informed decisions on what action may be taken to hold this power to account.