THE PROBLEM OF MIGRATION IN POST-2007 SERBIAN MEDIA DISCOURSE ABOUT EUROPE: FROM TOPIC MODELLING TO QUALITATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The study uses linguistic corpus tools in order to establish in what contexts the issue of migration in Europe was addressed in the Serbian press in the period 2007–2017. About 20,000 randomly chosen texts from the dailies Politika and Danas were subjected to topic modelling, collocational profiling, and also a contextual examination in the case of the paper editions. The interpretation of the data considered the effect of the medium’s ideological slant on the discourse structures used. It emerged that the selection of topics and the arrangement of texts in the liberal daily Danas corresponded to its pro-European profile. Politika, in turn, seemed to be gradually shifting towards the portrayal of Europe as being mired in crisis. In addition, the procedure used in the study enabled reflection on the usefulness of the results of topic modelling for media discourse analysis.