Xenophobic manifestations, otherness and violence in Greece 1996-2016 : evidence from an event analysis of media collections

Abstract

Research on xenophobia in Europe has recently received much attention in various academic disciplines. The existing scholarly debate focuses more on older patterns of xenophobia emerging as forms of ‘non-violent discrimination and segregation’ but pays less attention to xenophobia as a violent practice per se. This study attempts to examine xenophobia in Greece by employing an event extraction technique: we track violent attacks by Greek citizens on any kind of ‘foreigners’ by analysing a vast amount of text data available from newspapers and news websites over a twenty-year period: 1996-2015. We explore specific manifestations of xenophobic attitudes – physical and verbal attacks – to identify the actors involved and the targets of these violent xenophobic acts. Our results conform with previous studies in the field, first by highlighting the violent anti-immigrant behaviour of two actors, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party (GD) and the police, and second by identifying the targets of xenophobic violence. Our contribution to the literature is twofold: a) an application of an innovative methodological tool – event extraction analysis – to the study of a significant social phenomenon; and b) a mapping of the actors and targets of xenophobia in Greek society over the last twenty years.