Page - 217 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Svetlana Serebryakova | Issues of Migration 217 and parents from Grosny, and his first difficult years of adjustment to life in Stavropol’ (“Otkrytaya dlia vsekh i kazhdogo” 2007, No. 21, p. 10). On the other hand, media often diagnoses migrant problems, and the oftentimes problematic character of migration processes in the Stavropol’ area, especially in the Eastern rural districts with more and more Dagestan settlements. In these cases, journalists seek for scientific comment and sociological evaluation of the migration development, asking regionally well- known political scientists, sociologists, and experts in the field of conflict studies. Concluding it can be stated that the regional-, as well as city- and county-press have a different attitude towards issues of migration – differences that result from different journalistic policies and a varied readership. Where county- and city-newspapers concentrate on single events or the story of one single person, they often report in news, advertisements, accounts of different social programmes, and letters to the editor, on migration issues from a positive point of view. Journalists avoid a discriminatory vocabulary and negative stereotypes. In the Eastern counties of the Stavropol’ area, sharing borders with the North Caucasian Republics, oftentimes unbalanced and negative material is being published, sometimes leading to a deepening of conflicts. County newspapers inform a large readership about migration-related occurrences, about tendencies of integration policies – oftentimes in the con- text of federaly policy. In doing so, they prefer analytical news and interviews to report on the issue. Letters to the editor are one more source of information on the subject. Regularly being published, refugees and migrants have themselves a share in the statements on problems of integration into the receiving society. A survey that has been conducted among journalists by researchers from the faculty of history and theory of journalism at Stavropol’ State University, shows that journalists are aware of the importance of the issue, as well as of their own responsibility when journalistically dealing with the respective subject matter. Sometimes this awareness leads to an omission of migration issues in reporting, in order to, as one journalist put it, “bring no harm”. All in all, the print media of the Stavropol’ area acknowledges the potential for conflict going along with migration processes, especially in the Southern parts of the Russian Federation. But still, media content with positive tendencies prevails, thus encouraging positive associations and attitudes among citizens. In the process, tolerance and multicultural integration are keywords, positively shaping the main concept of interethnic relations and of non- controversial, intercultural communication in the North Caucasus.