61% of Europeans agree with the fact that immigrants enrich the country’s cultural life (Eurobarmeter, 2017-2018).
Wednesday the 4th of March, the second class of the course “Migration, the Sustainable Development Goals and Global Education” was taught at the University of Malta, as part of our InterCap: Develop Capacities Together project, in collaboration with DegreePlus.
The focus of this class was on migration in Malta, and the way that media frames people’s perception on migration and security. The students learned about the top five sending countries (also known as origin countries) with regards to Malta. They learned about the positive and negative perceptions that society has when it comes to immigration, e.g. “immigrants help to fill jobs in a county for which there are no applicants, but also worsen the crime problems in a country”. They learned about what Europeans think leads to successful integration, e.g. “speaking the country’s language, contributing to the welfare, and accepting the norms and values of a country”, according to Eurobarometer.
One of the class activities was analysing and discussing media headlines. Through this exercise, the students got a better understanding of how phrasing has an effect on people’s perception towards a topic or situation, e.g. adjectives such as ‘shocking’ are used in headlines to have the reader feel a certain way, before having fullyread the article. This is important to remember when looking up information and news articles.
The students paired up and all received a news article. It was their job to find out what the main message was, if the article was evidence based or not, see what kind of perspective the article gave on the topic it was about, and how imagery plays a role in arousing a specific viewpoint.
Read more about the InterCap project.
Access the online training package for free.
Article by Zoë Grivel
Photos taken during the second class of the course (4th of March, 2020).
