Hypothetical Discussion of Migrant Crime: An Examination of News Content from Canada, the UK, and the US

ABSTRACT

This research explores the use of hypothetical discussion – content that is speculative, conjectural, or abstract – in newspaper articles containing migrant crime. Content analysis and logistic regression are used to examine the presence of hypothetical discussion and its associated content in 225 newspaper articles from Canada, the UK, and the US. Results include various positive predictors of hypothetical discussion – e.g., mention of Islam; irregular migration status – as well as negative predictors – e.g., crime or migration status used in the article headline. Discussion of results are presented in the context of recent migration crises and growing nationalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Media
• migration
• crime
• immigrant
• hypothetical discussion
• content analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Walter Works for the generous contribution of his time to coding validation for this research.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sample articles used in the discussion are cited with a URL as Factiva did not provide page ranges for the articles; Note: many of the article titles are slightly different online than in Factiva, though the content is the same.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) [grant number CGS-M (2018)].