5-2. The media trend over the Syrian Refugee Crisis

 As a result, the Net-tone became worse dramatically after February 2016 (Fig 2-2, 2-3 and 2-4). The investigations on BBC media trend also exposed a different aspect of public emotions. The research question of this paper was “How have the public reactions changed as the trends of the media coverages have shifted?” The hypothesis for that was “The more there are negative headlines about refugees, the worse the public image towards them becomes”. However, the outcome of the survey was totally beyond expectations and it showed the inner complex matters that this subject potentially has. According to the three surveys conducted by YouGov in June, September and November 2015, the public sentiments towards refugees in the U.K. consistently were deteriorating during the period. In the inquiry of June 2015 (“Nearly Half of Britons”, 2015), 42% of the respondents said that those migrants escaping from conflict or persecution should not be welcomed to the U.K. From the result, it can be guessed that the Syrian refugee crisis split the U.K. public opinion into two at that time. One of the most surprising things that the analysis find is that the drowned boy incident affected the English people not so much at all. The survey of September 2015, which is soon after the tragic event, told that about 51 percent of the answerers showed their negative stance towards refugees. The pessimistic image towards the displaced people become much stronger after the incident. Even though the media trend calculated by Net-tone expressed sympathy about the situation of the Syrian refugees due to the incident, the public emotions seems to be never interfered with it. In addition, it seems that the Paris terrorist attack which never influenced the media trend played a crucial role to corrupt the refugees' public image. After the terror act, as reported by YouGov research, almost 72 percent of the people who participated in the survey replied that they had negative sentiments against those outsiders (Dahlgreen, 2015). The reaction of the respondents certainly indicate that the general people rarely distinguish the refugees from terrorists like the media usually tries to do. Not only that, it implies that even the sympathetic event like the drowned boy incident might give a boost of fear and hatred against those migrants. The public psychology could be seen in the transition of the approval rating for political parties. From the data which YouGov posts on its website, the comparison between conservative party and UKIP on their public support was made.

Though the conservative party, which is the ruling party led by David Cameron, gained the constant approval rating, the UKIP, which is famous for the anti-EU and anti-refugee policy, increased the support from citizens in the U.K every month (Fig 2-5). Every pivotal incidents related to the refugees seems to contribute to the support for UKIP. The above has led to the conclusion that the big incidents related to the refugee crisis have an effect on the media trend to some extent depending on whether they can be sympathetic or not. On the other hand, the public mind is not seemingly influenced by the media tone expressed in their news headlines. This would be because these days there are so many news sources such as Twitter and Facebook and those people tend to be skeptical about the major news coverages.