“Second-class citizens”: framing domestic migrant workers in Vietnamese news media during the fourth wave of COVID-19

Abstract

This study investigates how domestic migrant workers were framed in Vietnamese news media during the country’s fourth wave of COVID-19. Although the experience of domestic migrant workers in urban settings has been a relevant issue of studies among domestic and international academia, few papers have looked at migrant workers from the perspective of communication and media study. In an attempt to fill this knowledge gap, 239 news articles about migrant workers taken from three major Vietnamese online newspapers from April 27 to December 31, 2021, were content analyzed to understand how migrant workers were portrayed in the news media. Five generic news frames, (i) Economic consequences, (ii) Conflict, (iii) Human interest, (iv) Morality, and (v) Attribution of responsibility, were used for coding. It is found that migrant workers were multidimensionally depicted in the media as both pitiful, vulnerable, and helpless victims of the pandemic and objects of blame for new outbreaks, but the “victim” portrayal was more prevalent. Such findings align with previous studies on the framing of outgroups, i.e., immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, especially during medical crises.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• domestic migration
• media framing
• migrant workers
• news media
• Vietnam

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tra My Nguyen

Tra My Nguyen earned a BA degree in International Communication from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam. Her areas of interest include media and culture, media and globalization, and media and development. She has had professional experience in journalism and communication for development.

Anh Duc Do

Anh Duc Do obtained a PhD in International Communication at Macquarie University, Australia, in 2013. He is currently the Head of the Multimedia Department at the School of Journalism and Communication, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam.