Dehumanisation Effects in Media Portrayals of Refugees & Asylum Seekers - A longitudinal CDA study of media discourses, neuropsychological substrates

Broadly speaking, dehumanisation relates to the perception of members of a certain social group
as less than human - e.g. as closer to animals, objects or automatons (Lee & Harris, 2013). This
phenomenon plays a key role in intergroup conflict, as it hinders the development of prosocial
behaviour and enlarges the perceived gap between members of ingroups and outgroups (note for
example, the sending out of hate letters to Polish immigrants calling them "vermin" in the aftermath
of the EU Referendum).
Among other things, dehumanisation is facilitated by the presence and perpetuation of negative
stereotypes and prejudices; most commonly of socially vulnerable outgroups and minorities
(Dovidio, 1986). Efforts at understanding these effects have traditionally stemmed from disciplines
such as social psychology and neuroscience. Studies in these areas have probed the
sociocognitive bases of dehumanising behaviours by examining a range of neural responses which
emerge during interaction with members of different human groups. By observing electrical
potentials at cortical level after a stimulus is presented (i.e. through ERPs measured using
Electroencephalography -see Luck, 2005) or the hemodynamic activation of different brain areas
(using fMRI), close attention is paid to those neural responses which relate to the existence of
overgeneralised and/or negative attitudes and emotional associations related to factors such as,
but not limited to, race (see e.g. Volpert et al., 2012 which examines the neural substrates of
biased perceptions towards black people), or socioeconomic background (e.g. in Harris & Fiske,
2007, which notes that brain areas processing disgust are differentially activated by images of
homeless people and that engaging theory of mind contemplations mitigates this effect).
In most instances, such studies offer a snapshot of dehumanising behaviours at a given moment in
time, rather than accounting for the processes whereby they can evolve and change (with a
notable exception in Harris & Fiske, 2007 -see Amodio, 2014 for a state-of-things review of
neuroscientific studies focusing on dehumanisation, bias and prejudice). By the same token,
dehumanisation and prejudice have not yet been systematically studied in relation to linguistic and
discursive practices, and to the role that the language of powerful institutions (such as media
outlets and political leaders) has on their appearance in the public social imaginary.