Seeing Migration Narratives: Enhancing Decision Making Through Visualisation of Policy Debates for Civil Society and the Media

移民和难民问题是英国乃至全球最复杂、最两极分化的政策挑战之一。媒体对移民的叙述被认为对政策决定和公众对移民的态度有重大影响。然而，关于移民的大量媒体报道，以及它们在数字平台上传播的巨大复杂性，使得使用现有工具无法追踪和理解辩论中不同叙述、行动者和来源之间的关系。这为片面和误导性的公共辩论的出现创造了空间，这些辩论可以被利用来制造不和和恐惧，并导致既不符合国家利益也不符合移民和难民社区利益的政策制定。该项目将开发和应用自然语言处理、机器学习、统计学和数据可视化等新技术，以揭示有关移民的数字话语的内容和性质；跟踪不同故事和概念的传播；展示辩论中不同声音的影响力。这将为辩论中权力和影响力的来源提供明确证据，并使处理这一问题的民间社会行为者、决策者和记者能够就采取何种行动对这种权力负责作出知情决定。

Migration and refugee issues are among the most complex and polarising policy challenges in the UK and globally. Media narratives on migration are perceived to have a significant impact on policy decisions and public attitudes toward migration. However the enormous number of media stories about migration, and the immense complexity of their diffusion around digital platforms make it impossible, using existing tools, to track and understand the relationship between different narratives, actors and sources in the debate. This creates space for the emergence of one-sided and misleading public debates, which can be exploited to generate discord and fear and lead to policy making that serves neither the national interest nor the interests of migrant and refugee communities.This project will develop and apply novel techniques from natural language processing, machine learning, statistics, and data visualisation to: reveal the content and nature of digital discourse on migration; track the diffusion of different stories and concepts; demonstrate the reach of different voices in the debate. This will provide clear evidence of the sources of power and influence within the debate, and allow civil society actors, policy makers and journalists dealing with the issue to make informed decisions on what action may be taken to hold this power to account.