Aylan Kurdi como imagem-despertador da crise dos refugiados: o enquadramento da imprensa ibérica

Abstract

Considering the background of the refugee crisis, September 2, 2015 unequivocally marks the media coverage given to this issue around the world. The appearance of a corpse of a three-year-old Syrian child on a Turkish beach has greatly contributed to a different framework of the crisis that has come to  have a face and a name: Aylan Kurdi. Without setting a comparison between the before and after this media event, the purpose is to analyze how this event influenced media coverage of the refugee crisis in subsequent moments. Using a convenience sample will be analyzed four specific moments relying on the image of Aylan Kurdi that seem significant to us of what this photo came to signify, during the framing process. This paper aims to extract the analysis of the online version of two quality newspapers from Portugal and Spain, at a time of the refugees’ crisis. Through the discourse analysis of the collected data related with framing and priming effects one tries to add a new concept to the many ones already existing in the field of effects theory: the concept of awakening-image, as an element that triggers a set of memories and latent knowledge associated with an issue, subject or protagonist.