To come or not to come: A Content Analysis of the Refugee Crisis in The Romanian Mass Media
To come or not to come: A Content Analysis of the Refugee Crisis in The Romanian Mass Media

Summary/Abstract: This paper sets out to examine the media discourse regarding the issue of immigration in the context of the refugee crisis in the European Union. To this purpose,the paper content analyzed 94 articles published by three types of media outlets (a news agency – Mediafax, a daily newspaper – Gândul, and a tabloid newspaper – Libertatea) between 2011 and 2017. The data thus collected were coded using a coding scheme and then subjected to statistical analyses carried out along two lines: (1) to identify the central themes and specific topics present in the Romanian media discourse on immigration,and (2) to understand the differences regarding the attitudes towards the situation of immigrants in terms of the media sources where the article was published. Following the analyses, the paper found out that the main themes used to frame discursively the issue of immigration were “refugee crisis”, “immigration as a solution”, and “immigration as a problem”, each of these having their own thematic ramifications. Moreover, the analysis pointed out significant differences existing in the media rhetoric towards the immigrants:while the news agency developed a neutral-informative and fact-based discourse, the tabloid produced a discourse based on alarmist and panicking messages as well as sensational headlines regarding the supposed threat posed by the immigrants in Romania.

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