Shaping of the Public Discourse on Refugees in Social Media: "Refugees Welcome Lithuania"

Social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are starting to become places, where people present and evaluate various events in the world: terrorist attacks in London, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels. What is more, these websites influence values of their users and readers. Technologies allow people to exchange views at the very moment of the event. The time zone, area, or other physical aspects of the platform participants do not matter. However, this ability might cause negative impact on the discussed social groups. The aim of this article – to analyse the discourse formation in media regarding refugees’ integration and humanitarian crisis in Europe. The goals of this study are: to figure out how the practices of public participation evidences in the context of communication through social media; to form a methodology according to up-to-date communicational concepts and analyse how the images of refugees are formed in social media; to reveal the main actors, involved in the formation of the discourse on refugees in Lithuania, by analysing the content in Facebook pages “Priimsiu pabėgėlį” (eng. “Refugees Welcome”) and “Visuomeninis komitetas prieš priverstinę imigraciją” (eng. “Public Committee against Forced Immigration”).