“YouTube helps us a lot.” Media repertoires and social integration of Iraqi and Syrian refugee families in Germany

This article examines the media repertoires of 10 Syrian and 10 Iraqi refugee families (n=100) in the city of Erlangen, Germany. Based on media repertoire theory (Hasebrink and Hepp 2017) and through a qualitative approach combining several methods of data collection (qualitative interviews, focus groups and media repertoire drawings), we analyse how the cumulative media practices and devices of refugee families (media repertoires) relate to their social and cultural integration in their host society. Our findings indicate that younger refugees, which are more interested in German content had repertoires and networks that reflected such, while older refugees are still origin focused in both networks and content. These findings emphasize the importance of media repertoires in highlighting practices that can integrate or isolate refugees in different sociocultural contexts and their host societies.