Media socialisation functions as a crucial site of education in which knowledge, norms, and hierarchies are produced and reproduced. Stereotypes within media shape the media experiences of children and young people and reinforce hegemonic knowledge in public discourse, with enormous consequences for Roma individuals, among others. Empirical studies demonstrate that members of Roma communities face widespread discrimination in social institutions, including education and media-related contexts (Boatcă 2025; Cudak/Rostas 2023; Pasquali 2023; Reuter 2023; UKA 2021;; Randjelović et al. 2020;Scherr/Sachs 2018). As a result, people affected by discrimination often develop fears and mistrust toward the media. Parents and educational professionals are confronted with the challenge of addressing misrepresentation, for example, in children’s literature as well as in cinematic, streaming or social media content (Randjelović et al. 2020). These patterns of misrepresentation are not new: stereotypes and strategies such as exoticisation, demonisation, and criminalisation have been reproduced across media for centuries. Historical documentation can be found in literature (Bogdal 2011; Brittnacher 2012), film (Mladenova 2019; Josting et al. 2017), photography (Bell/Suckow 2008; Reuter 2016), and public reporting (End 2014; Tremlett/Messing/Kóczé 2017; UKA 2021; Haus/Uslu 2025, Voina/Sabău 2025). As a result, such media representations have become widespread, constituting a transnationally circulated media knowledge and a European phenomenon. Such a “regime of representation” (Hall 2024) shows how contemporary media socialisation continues to be shaped by racist patterns as discussed in the discourse on antigypsyism. At the same time, media are not only sites of reproduction but can also open spaces in which harsh representations are made visible, stereotypes are questioned, and alternative images become possible (End 2014).

In this paper, we present findings from a qualitative reception study that investigates how Roma individuals interpret media content. The study focuses on the role of media in socialisation and the ways in which hegemonic and epistemic powerful representations framing Roma as criminalised, precarious, or portrayed as outsiders, shape perceptions and everyday experiences. We examine how these portrayals are received, negotiated, and resisted, including the strategies participants apply to cope with forms of discrimination or stereotypical media knowledge. The analysis considers media with both national and international reach, highlighting how reception contribute to understanding the impact of such representations on Roma individuals or communities.

This contribution is part of a funded project investigating the representation of Roma and other epistemically constructed figures in media. Building on three analytical strands, children’s and youth literature, film and television, and public reporting, the paper focuses on the qualitative reception analysis of such media, considering media as a site of socialisation in which knowledge, norms, and hierarchies are produced and circulated. Various members of the heterogeneous Roma communities report from their own experience how patterns of criminalisation, precarisation, and portrayal as outsiders are reflected in media content, shaping perceptions, everyday life experiences, and the media socialisation. The 12 in-depth narrative interviews (Kruse 2015) capture these biographical experiences and highlight how media representations are linked to participants’ social positioning, to historical contexts, and hegemonic knowledge (Hall 1993). Sampling criteria included age, generation, and levels of political and media engagement (ranging from non-involvement to political activism). To complement these individual perspectives, we conducted 9 group discussions (Przyborski/Riegler 2010) with educators, media professionals, and historical witnesses. The media excerpts presented in the discussions were drawn from the project’s media analysis and served as concrete material to explore how media contribute to processes of socialisation and the circulation of powerful representations. Our analysis employed a reconstructive approach to uncover interpretive patterns, while the qualitative data from interviews and group discussions were systematically analysed using Grounded Theory (Strübing 2021).

By combining critical media research with reception studies, the project situates reception processes at the centre of understanding how powerful media knowledge circulates, and how such media experiences shape socialisation across different contexts and generations. It can be shown that the interviewees experience the dominant portrayal of Roma in the media as poor and disadvantaged (precarisation) and criminal (criminalisation) as highly discriminatory. Another key point for our interview partners is what is not portrayed in the media. Some interviewees point out that Roma hardly ever appear in German school textbooks, and when they do, they are portrayed as a newly immigrated group. This strategy of migrantisation obscures the fact that most of these communities have been part of German society for centuries. The tendency for media representations of Roma in public reporting to focus primarily on the spectacular (in the sense of Hall's (2024) “spectacle of the ’other’”) leads to a de-normalisation and invisibilisation of the ordinary. Middle- and upper-class lifestyles, educational achievement and professional success do not appear to be newsworthy. Our findings show that our interviewees not only assume that these media representations shape society's image of Roma and encourage discrimination in other areas of life. They attribute to these highly selective and one-sidedly problematic forms of media representation a central role to maintain and legitimise antigypsyism. Furthermore, our findings illustrate that these representations also influence the self-image and self-perception of the interviewees. Creating counter-narratives and using social media for activism against media antiziganism is seen as a productive resistance strategy.

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