Media

Mohammad Shafin Alif

How Media Representation Influences Public Understanding of Refugees

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Mohammad Shafin Alif is a fourth-year Professional Communication student at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is interested in storytelling, media, and how communication shapes the way people understand social issues. His academic interests focus on the power of narratives to influence perception, build empathy, and connect people across different experiences.

For his capstone project, Mohammad explores how media representation influences public understanding of refugees. His research examines how repeated narratives in news, social media, and documentaries can shape audience perceptions over time, sometimes acting like subtle forms of influence or propaganda. He is particularly interested in how these portrayals can either reinforce stereotypes or create more human-centred understanding.

Through his work, Mohammad aims to highlight the importance of responsible storytelling and encourages more thoughtful and balanced communication in the media.

This research explores how media representation influences public understanding of refugees. It focuses on how refugees are portrayed across news, social media, and documentaries, and how these portrayals shape the way audiences think and feel. The study looks beyond just what is shown and examines how elements like language, tone, visuals, and storytelling style contribute to forming public perception.

Using a qualitative approach, the research includes content analysis of selected media sources along with a small number of interviews. The analysis focuses on identifying common patterns such as crisis framing, victim narratives, and the absence or presence of human-centred storytelling. The interviews help provide insight into how audiences interpret these messages and how media exposure connects to their personal understanding of refugees.

The findings suggest that repeated media narratives can have a long-term influence on perception. When certain ideas are shown consistently over time, they can begin to feel like truth, even shaping beliefs at a subconscious level. In some cases, this repetition can act like a subtle form of propaganda, where misinformation or incomplete narratives stay in the background of people’s thinking. At the same time, the research shows that more balanced and personal storytelling can challenge stereotypes, build empathy, and encourage a more informed and human understanding of refugee experiences.

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