Eugenia Stamboliev presented her paper "Using the refugee as vehicle for political shift – The 2016 Austrian presidential election" at the “Prague Media Point: Media and Migration" pre-conference to ECREA's sixth European Communication Conference in Prague, which took place in November 2016.
Her paper deals with the issue of how political narratives are constructing a "representative" conflict to instrument voters. The consequences of the recent refugee crisis that Europe faced are providing a precise illustration of political symbolism through and with the use of media channels.
The conference "addressed the broad topic of media and migration, focusing on topics such as the role of the media in the refugee crisis; media depictions of immigrant and migrant communities; and the media’s influence on belonging and identity – especially in the context of transnationalism, multiculturalism, and a globalized world."
The conference was supported by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Prague, the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), the London School of Economics, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Prague, the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism at Charles University, and the Comparative Interdisciplinary Studies Section (CISS) of the International Studies Association (ISA).
The paper "Using the refugee as vehicle for political shift – The 2016 Austrian presidential election" is connected to Eugenia's research on "Imag(in)ing intimacy. On the representation and experience of affection".