The field of migration in the media is characterised by a rich research dynamic, but there is still a
lack of studies examining contemporary online media from a hybrid perspective. In the doctoral
dissertation, we scrutinise the construction of the 2015–2016 refugee »crisis« in Slovenia from the
perspective of the hybrid media system. Empirically, we focus on the discussion on Twitter between
September and December 2015, when the arrival of migrants in Slovenia was the largest, and,
consequently, the topic of migration was most exposed in the mass and social media. The main
question is what role the mass media agenda plays in the construction of the Twitter agenda in the
case of the 2015–2016 refugee »crisis« in Slovenia. We follow the theory of a hybrid media system,
complementing it with the agenda-setting theory and the network theory. Based on the mixed
methodological approach, combining social network analysis and critical discourse studies, we find
the most influential users to be elite actors, especially representatives of the mass media and the
political elite. Although content directly related to mass media mostly appears only in the twenty
most retweeted URL-domains, we found that the discourses of the most retweeted tweets with URLdomains and hashtags related to mass media, as well as the discourses of the twenty most retweeted
tweets at the level of the entire discussion on Twitter, do not differ from the discourses that studies
in the field of migration in the media demonstrate as prevalent in mass media. Various discursive
discriminatory practices aimed at justifying reasons for rejecting migrants appear in most retweets.
In contrast, the proportion of retweets characterised by attempts to overcome negative stereotypes
about migrants is in the minority (except for the most retweeted tweets with hashtags referring to
mass media, where positive discourses about migrants predominate). Our results are important for
the field of migration in the media because we demonstrate that the social media environment fails
to empower non-elite social actors but rather amplifies the most influential social voices.
Furthermore, the main contribution of our research is in showing that hybrid media system theory,
agenda-setting theory, and network theory form a coherent approach to the study of contemporary
hybrid media.
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