Migrant-Related Conflicts on YouTube.com

Abstract

The growing popularity of social networks, which turn passive consumers of Internet content into content creators, has been instrumental in involving Russians in more active discussions about various facets of social life, including those having to do with migration and migrants. There are plenty of in formation and resources of all kinds on this particular topic available on the Internet. An examination of them may point to the presence of a distinctive anti-migrant (xenophobic) discourse both in the established mass media and in the virtual space represented by various video blogs. The article draws on the analysis of online content hosted on YouTube, focusing specifically on labor migrants, to discuss the ways in which images of “others” or “aliens” have been constructed in Russian social discourses.