![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The issue of international migration has not attracted a comprehensive global attention from media scholars, who mainly focus on migrants’ destination countries and overlook their countries of origin. We sought to obtain a broader understanding of migration news by examining news sources used by journalists in migration-related news from origin and destination countries in South Asia and the Pacific. We utilised the notion of “enterprise journalism” (Hansen 1991, “Source diversity and newspaper enterprise journalism.” Mass Communication and Journalism Quarterly 68 (3): 474–482.) to measure the relative power of sources of information and journalists to shape the news. We quantified different sources of migration news in six countries and examined the patterns of sourcing in what could be categorised as the product of both “routine” and “enterprise” journalism. Our data support the findings of many previous studies in demonstrating that official and elite political sources dominate migration news overall. However, in enterprise news content, the position of migrant sources is significantly enhanced in South Asia, which indicates a willingness of journalists from this region to present the lived experiences of migrants in global deliberations on migration issues.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.