Worthy and Unworthy Refugees: Framing the Ukrainian and Syrian Refugee Crises in Elite American Newspapers

ABSTRACT

This research comparatively examined coverage of the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis and 2022 Ukrainian refugee crisis in five elite American daily papers. The study employed quantitative content analysis and was guided by framing theory. Findings suggest that newspapers were more likely to humanize Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees, and to frame Syrian refugees as threats and aggressors. The paper discusses the implications of the findings in light of past research into anti-Muslim media discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• Ukraine
• Syria
• framing
• content analysis
• humanitarianism

Introduction

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, analysts almost immediately began asking questions about how Ukrainian victims were being treated, both politically and as subjects of Western news reporting. Some writers pointed to the relatively sympathetic treatment of Ukrainians by nation states and media outlets, with some specifically highlighting apparent disparities between treatment of Ukrainian war victims (who are European and mostly white and Christian) and other, non-Western, non-European, non-Christian victims of war.

Many analysts offered up explicit comparisons between violent conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Although the crises in Ukraine and Syria are characterized by vastly different political dynamics and contexts, the two events also overlap in important ways. In particular, as of late 2022, both conflicts are ongoing and have produced millions of refugees of war.

The Ukraine and Syria crises present a useful comparison, particularly in terms of how victims, and especially refugees, have been treated. For instance, some European nations have apparently been more welcoming of Ukrainian refugees than they have been of Syrian refugees (Njai, Torres, and Matache 2022). Paula Pinheiro, the United Nations Syria Commission Chair, said there are “depressing” inconsistencies in the way European countries have treated Ukrainian victims, on the one hand, and Syrian victims, on the other hand (Ghadakpour 2022). Pinherio said, “There is openness and generosity vis-à-vis the Ukraine that I don’t criticize at all. They deserve it. But I would like very much that the same treatment will be applied to the Syrian refugees” (Ghadakpour 2022).

Media have been front-and-center of discussions of alleged disparities and double standards, with some writers claiming that Western news reporting has shown more sympathy to Ukrainian victims and refugees than to other, non-European victims and refugees (Al-Jazeera 2022; CBC News 2022; Ellison and Andrews 2022; Gharib 2022).

One oft-cited example concerns CBS News reporter Charlie D’Agata, who, while not specifically referencing Syria, seemed to draw a distinction between Ukrainian European victims and Middle Eastern victims (Bayoumi 2022). In a late February 2022 report, D’Agata said that Ukraine

isn’t a place, with all due respect  … that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.

The Washington Post documented numerous other examples of apparent disparity and stereotyping in news reporting (Ellison and Andrews 2022).

The current research seeks to empirically assess whether and to what extent disparities actually played out. Specifically, this study uses quantitative content analysis to comparatively examine elite American newspaper coverage of both Ukrainian and Syrian refugees.

Literature Review

Background on Syrian and Ukrainian Wars

Syria witnessed a series of massive protests that were launched against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad at the beginning of 2011, as part of the Arab protest movements that came to be known as the “Arab Spring.” These protests, which advocated for more freedoms and basic human rights in Syria, were met with vigilant resistance by the regime, leading to the intervention of foreign powers, such as Russia and Iran’s Hezbollah group. The crisis turned into a full-fledged civil war between the Syrian regime and the coalition of Syrian opposition forces during the first half of 2012 (Karim and Islam 2016).

This civil war has led to internal and external displacements of nearly half of the Syrian population, which exceeded 22 million people before the start of the war. The war also led to wide-scale and forced migration of millions of Syrian refugees, who tried to seek asylum in some regional, but mostly Western, countries (Yigit and Tatch 2017). In fact, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2021 indicators showed that approximately 5.6 million Syrian refugees have been displaced out of the country (Al-Dalahmeh and Dajnoki 2021). This represents “the largest refugee flow since the Second World War” (Kaya and Orchard 2019, 96).

Several Western countries, including the United States, have not received Syrian refugees with open arms. “The American effort [in receiving Syrian refugees] falls short of the need for resettlement and the UNHCR has repeatedly expressed frustration about the limited resettlement opportunities in the United States and other Western countries” (Allwright 2018, 40). One factor likely contributing to the weak American response to the Syrian refugee crisis was negative political rhetoric about Syrian refugees (Aswad and de Velasco 2020). American political figures often framed Syrian refugees as “pre-emptive suspects” who held a type of “terrorist potential” (Aswad and de Velasco 2020, 747–748).

As for the Ukrainian war, it started on 24 February 2022 when Russia launched an extensive invasion against Ukraine. The invasion followed continuous tensions between Russia and Ukraine after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the conflict in the border city of Donbas, ongoing since 2014 (Dijkstra et al. 2022). One out of four Ukrainians have been dislocated, and four million refugees have fled Ukraine into neighboring European countries, especially Poland (Javanbakht 2022; Stepanova 2022). In fact, UNHCR indicators showed that Poland received 3.7 million Ukrainian refugees by June 2022 (Paluektau 2022).

European countries have generally been welcoming of Ukrainian refugees. In this context, the Council of the European Union, in a step to facilitate the reception and integration of Ukrainian refugees in European countries, “has approved for the first time the adoption of the Temporary Protection Directive, which will allow a one-year renewable permit to reside and to access essential services … in all EU [countries]” (Marchese et al. 2022, 1).

Western Media Coverage of Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Refugees have often been framed by Western news media as either victims or threats, depending on the editorial leanings of media outlets, refugee ethnicity, and the extent to which refugees are included or excluded by host countries.

For example, a quantitative content analysis of how asylum seekers and refugees are covered in mainstream British newspapers showed that the papers’ ideological leanings played a critical role in framing differences. Specifically, findings showed that left-leaning newspapers framed refugees and asylum seekers as victims, while right-leaning publications framed them as criminals (Blumel et al. 2019).

Another study analyzing the framing of refugees in British national newspapers found that refugees were framed as either vulnerable and in need of protection by host countries or as security threats that could harm host countries. Muslim refugees, in particular, were framed as hostile, reluctant to integrate, and deserving of exclusion (Goodman and Kirkwood 2019).

Past research has shown that refugees are often Othered. For example, a visual representation of asylum seekers and refugees in nine mainstream British newspapers during the leadup to the British general elections in 2005 showed that refugees and asylum seekers were visually portrayed as deviant “others” (Banks 2012, 293).

The portrayal of refugees as the “Other” was also a central finding in a qualitative analysis of the representation of asylum seekers and refugees in several national and regional Australian newspapers during the leadup to the 2001 federal elections in Australia. Findings showed that refugees and asylum seekers were labeled as “boat people,” as most of them arrived into the country by boat. They were “represented as the ‘illegal', non-western, non-Christian Other” (Gale 2004, 334).

A number of studies suggest that Western reportage tends to focus on refugees and asylum seekers as security risks. For instance, an analysis of coverage of two episodes of asylum seeker arrivals to Canada in the mid-1980s in four Canadian daily newspapers and one national news magazine pointed to “a securitized discourse” that depicted the asylum seekers as a threat to the country. This depiction facilitated “the adoption of harsh border control policies” (Watson 2007, 117).

A study of refugee coverage in five European countries—Hungary, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Spain—showed that media in countries closer to the Middle East tended to focus more on border control as a central issue (Heidenreich et al. 2019).

Border control was also the focus of a study examining how German media frame refugees. Findings showed that when refugees were considered a threat to the host country, closing borders and expelling refugees were highlighted as defensive measures (Holzberg, Kolbe, and Zaborowski 2018).

A study by Greussing and Goomgaarden (2017) showed that six Austrian newspapers also highlighted border control in their coverage of refugees. Specifically, findings showed that a security threat frame was prominent in coverage.

Some research suggests relatively favorable Western coverage of refugees. For example, a study by Steimel (2010), which analyzed coverage of refugees in mainstream U.S. newspapers, found that there was broad sympathy for the plight of refugees, whose humanity was highlighted in coverage. The studied papers described the “harsh reality for refugees” in America and portrayed refugees as “victims of the American economic crisis” (Steimel 2010, 219).

A discourse analysis by Khosravinik (2009) examined representation of refugees in two British newspapers, The Times, a broadsheet, and the Daily Mail, a tabloid. While Daily Mail coverage of refugees was based on stereotypes, The Times was fair and avoided stereotyping refugees.

Western Media Coverage of Syrian Refugees

Most of the studies that have analyzed Western media coverage of refugees in general showed a “widespread tendency to construe refugees – in particular those migrating to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – as dehumanized, homogenous, passive masses and a threat to Europe’s safety, economy and values” (Paluektau 2022, 2).

A study by Chouliaraki and Zaborowski (2017) that analyzed coverage of the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe in 1,200 news articles across 18 European newspapers found that the refugees’ voices were neglected in favor of the voices of political elites. Through excluding their voices in the news narratives, refugees were “further denied the capacity to be seen and validated” (Chouliaraki and Zaborowski 2017, 20).

Along the same lines, Bayoumi (2013) analyzed images of asylum seekers to Australia in two mainstream Australian newspapers, finding that asylum seekers were portrayed “as medium or large groups and through a focus on boats … with a relative absence of images that depict individual asylum seekers with recognizable facial features” (388). This portrayal contributed to the asylum seekers’ dehumanization, constructing them as potential threats to the host country’s safety and well-being (Bleiker et al. 2013). In this context, Szczepanik (2016) argued that “refugees are dehumanized when presented as a devoid of agency, speechless ‘sea of humanity' where individuals remain anonymous” (31).

A discourse analysis of Western news coverage of Syrian refugees pointed to a pattern that associates the refugees with threat, criminality and danger. This was exemplified on two levels: “First, through the rhetoric of natural disasters, which emphasizes the devastation refugees have on countries that help them and second, [through] nationalist rhetoric that constructs outsiders as threats and terrorists” (Dykstra 2016, 39).

A study by Romano and Porto (2021) analyzed the representation of Syrian refugees in two European newspapers: The Guardian of Britain and El Pais of Spain. The study was conducted on a sample from 2016, the year that witnessed a massive influx of Syrian refugees who were seeking asylum in Europe. The study found two predominant frames that were adopted through headlines and photos in the two newspapers: Conflict (represented in the clashes between the European law enforcers and the refugees who are considered a possible threat) and morality (represented through highlighting the efforts exerted by the European countries to help the refugees and to lessen their suffering) (Romano and Porto 2021).

A study examining framing of Syrian refugees in two European mainstream daily newspapers—Hurriyet from Turkey and Vergens Gang from Norway—pointed to the near absence of refugee voice. This could be a strong indicator of the refugees’ dehumanization in both newspapers. The two papers, however, did not use many negative terms in describing the refugees (Toker 2019).

A critical discourse analysis of representations of Syrian refugees in five newspapers from three European countries—Turkey, Bulgaria and the UK—found that “the daily accounts of how refugees live and how they support themselves is rarely explained in the coverage.” Absent also was the refugees’ hopes for the future (Ozdora-Aksak, Connolly-Ahern, and Dimitrova 2021, 293).

A content analysis examining Syrian refugees in several Arab and Western news outlets found that Western news articles “typically framed the Syrian refugee crisis around domestic political, cultural, and economic concerns … [while the Arab news] articles … [focused] on the implications of war and conflict for the personal and humanitarian conditions faced by Syrian refugees as people" (Ramasubramanian and Miles 2018, 4498).

A few studies have looked into the portrayal of Syrian refugees in the U.S. media. Aswad (2019) analyzed the New York Times’ coverage of Syrian refugees during the 2016 Presidential elections in the United States. While the findings from this study showed that the paper adopted a neutral tone in more than half the articles that were analyzed, there was still an implied and covert negative bias in the portrayal of the refugees. This bias was exemplified in adopting discourse that othered the Syrian refugees and portrayed them as a threat to the host country.

Coupled with the construction of an “us” versus “them” narrative and assumptions of hostile attitudes toward refugees, these discursive strategies assist in the de-personalization and de-humanization of Syrian refugees. Such depictions not only augment levels of prejudice and xenophobia, but potentially impair the case for their successful integration into society. (Aswad 2019, 370)

Not all studies, however, have revealed negative, de-humanizing Western news framing of Syrian refugees. A few studies have shown the opposite. A study by Douai, Bastug, and Akca (2022) analyzed the Syrian refugees’ coverage in U.S. local news in the lead-up to the presidential primaries in 2015–2016. Findings pointed to the predominance of the human-interest frame through shedding light on the refugees’ individual stories of suffering and daily struggles that marked their journeys into their new homes. “Tragic cases of Syrian refugees dying to escape from their homeland contributed to the resilience of the human-interest frame” (Douai, Bastug, and Akca 2022, 107). Along with the human-interest frame, the national security threat frame was also reflected in the findings. The use of this frame could be attributed “to perceptions of risk and security threats that have inflamed American public attitudes toward immigration and government policies” (Douai, Bastug, and Akca 2022, 107).

A visual representation study by Hellmueller and Zhang (2019) looked into the Syrian refugees’ photos on CNN and the German newspaper’s Spiegel Online news websites following the 2015 publication of a photo of Alan Kurdi, a three-year old Syrian refugee, whose dead body was found lying along the Turkish shores. Findings from this study revealed that CNN adopted a “humanized visual framing” (1) after the publication of Kurdi’s photo, while Spiegel Online coverage showcased a border security frame.

Kurdi’s photo had solicited sympathy in various Western circles and “galvanized a palpable international outcry” (Rosen and Crafter 2018, 66). Sympathizing with child refugees is not atypical in Western media. In this context, Cousens (2015) argued in an op-ed in the British newspaper, The Independent, that

if our humanitarian sympathies are only summoned in response to children and families, then we risk dehumanizing Arab men. This only helps to reinforce a history of Western misrepresentation, in which Arab men are viewed as dangerous, uncivilized, barbaric, and incapable of reason.

A content analysis of the representation of Syrian child refugee health in several Turkish daily newspapers pointed to a departure from the stereotypically negative framing of Arab refugees in Western media. The analyzed newspapers “particularized the specific health problems faced by Syrian … children, rather than treating them collectively as a nameless mass” (Narli and Ozascilar 2019, 177). It is worth noting here that Turkey is a Muslim-majority country (Ekmekci 2017) that is part of the greater Middle East, and it is not representative of the rest of Europe, at least insofar as their treatment of Muslims is concerned.

Western Media Coverage of Ukrainian Refugees

To date, there are hardly any studies analyzing Western media coverage of Ukrainian refugees due to the recency of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Paluektau (2022) analyzed the portrayal of Ukrainian refugees during the first week of March 2022 in three Polish newspapers: Fact, a tabloid widely circulating paper, Electoral Gazette, a left-wing liberal paper and Republic, a right-wing conservative paper. Generally, the coverage in all three papers reflected either a neutral or positive tone that framed the Ukrainian refugees as recipients of state help, especially when it came to accommodation. In this context, the papers highlighted the humanitarian aid initiatives that were allocated for the Ukrainian refugees. The papers also framed the refugees as active and positive contributors to the Polish labor market (Paluektau 2022).

A discourse analysis by Maenpaa (2022) looked into coverage of Ukrainian refugees on Deutche Welle (DW), a German television network, and Al-Jazeera English. Findings showed that DW used an empathy frame in describing the Ukrainian refugees by highlighting their suffering and describing them as “legal immigrants.” DW also used the term “refugee influx … which naturalizes the idea of taking care of these refugees” as opposed to “refugee crisis,” which “would imply that there is a threat coming from the refugees” (Maenpaa 2022, 16). Framing Ukrainian refugees on Al-Jazeera English was either neutral or positive. The network used terms such as “mass exodus,” “mass movement of Ukrainians” and “Ukrainians fleeing Ukraine.” Al-Jazeera English also described the refugees “as safe, civilized and middle class” (Maenpaa 2022, 17).

Framing Theory

Framing provides various approaches that individuals rely on to formulate specific positions or standpoints about a given issue. Hence, frames play a critical role in shaping up, or at least steering public opinion in certain directions (Chong and Druckman 2007). According to Entman (1993),

to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. (52)

In the news media context, a frame entails “journalistic intentions, news values, discursive structures, and content formats” that are reflected and projected textually and visually in a news story (D’Angelo 2002, 881). Media scholars analyze frames to detect patterns of news coverage of a specific issue and to potentially compare these patterns across various media outlets (Chong and Druckman 2007).

Lexical decisions are a determining factor in how frames are perceived and interpreted. In fact, “a frame is the particular quality assigned an issue by the … [communicator’s] linguistic choices” (Drake and Donohue 1996, 301).

Entman (1993) identified four key players in the framing process: the communicator who determines the frames’ trends and directions; the text through which the frames are expressed; the receiver who construes and deciphers the frames; and the culture which provides the context for developing and interpreting these frames.

The dynamics of interactions among the above players in the framing process have led Scheufele (1999) to categorize frames as: Media frames (aspects or dimensions in a news story that reflect the communicators’ objectives and desired outcomes) and individual frames (the receivers’ frames of reference and “mentally stored clusters” that they rely on to make sense of and decode the presented frames) (107). The communicators’ decisions with regard to the features that are associated with and embedded in the media frames is part of the frame-building process. This process is affected by the communicators’ socio-cultural backgrounds and by the norms and values of the news organizations for which they work (de Vreese 2005).

The individual frames are affected by the media frames’ priming, which is the process of giving prominence to some aspects of a story with the purpose of drawing the audiences’ attention to them (Entman 2007). This interplay between media frames and individual frames is described by de Vreese (2005) as the frame-setting process through which “frames in the news may affect learning, interpretation, and evaluation of issues and events” (52).

In light of what goes through the processes of frame-building and frame-setting, it becomes obvious that the journalists’ main goal in using frames is to affect their audiences’ thinking about the issues presented. But there is also another objective behind using news frames, which is to simplify the issues at hand. “Frames, in other words, become invaluable tools for presenting relatively complex issues … efficiently and in a way that makes them accessible to lay audiences because they play to existing cognitive schemas” (Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007, 12).

Journalists utilize various devices to exemplify the frames with which they work. Frames are often highlighted in headlines, photographs and their captions, and lead and concluding paragraphs, with sources, keywords and phrases often dictating frame directions (de Vreese 2005; Pan and Kosicki 1993). Many framing scholars (see de Vreese 2005; Entman 1993; and Goncalves 2023, among others) have pointed specifically to the importance of sourcing, including quotes and paraphrases, to framing processes. This is because sources can drive frames and lead to either augmenting or marginalizing positions, issues, and groups (Goncalves 2023).

News frames have been categorized according to various typologies, most prominent among which are the issue-specific frames, which deal with particular subjects or matters and generic frames, which “transcend thematic limitations and can be identified in relation to different topics, some even over time and in different cultural frames” (de Vreese 2005, 54).

Hypotheses

Aforementioned studies by Dykstra (2016) and Aswad (2019), among others, suggest a pattern of negative Western media framing of Syrian refugees. Meanwhile, preliminary research into Western coverage of Ukrainian refugees, including the studies by Maenpaa (2022) and Paluektau (2022), suggests relatively sympathetic reportage. Based on these prior studies, as well as the American and other Western political dynamics described in the introduction to this study, a basic assumption of this research is that Syrian refugees will be covered more critically overall than Ukrainian refugees. The following hypothesis is put forth:

H1: Articles will be more sympathetic to Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees.

H1 is accompanied by several sub-hypotheses, each of which is grounded in past literature.

The studies by Rosen and Crafter (2018) and Narli and Ozascilar (2019) both spoke to the importance of descriptions of children to news coverage of refugees. Highlighting the plight of child refugees can produce more sympathetic framing of refugees overall. Based on this observation, as well as the assumption that coverage of Ukrainian refugees will be more sympathetic than coverage of Syrian refugees overall, sub-hypothesis H1a states the following:

H1a: On average, articles will feature more mentions of Ukrainian child refugees than Syrian child refugees.

Research by Douai, Bastug, and Akca (2022), Hellmueller and Zhang (2019), and (Ozdora-Aksak, Connolly-Ahern, and Dimitrova 2021) highlighted the importance of examining humanitarian crisis framing, the extent to which news outlets are willing to describe the basic human suffering of refugees. According to both of these studies, humanitarian crisis framing can lead to more sympathetic coverage of refugees overall. Based on this, as well as the basic assumption that Ukrainian refugees will receive more sympathetic coverage than Syrian refugees, the following sub-hypothesis is presented:

H1b: Articles will be more likely to employ a humanitarian crisis frame in the context of the Ukrainian refugee crisis than in the Syrian refugee crisis.

Past research has also argued that coverage of refugees can tend to either humanize or dehumanize refugees. Dehumanization involves, in part, presenting refugees as “anonymous” (Szczepanik 2016, 31). In the same vein, past content analysis research carried out in other contexts has suggested that providing personal details about victims can humanize them (Elmasry and el-Nawawy 2022). Based on all of this, as well as the basic assumption that Ukrainian refugees will be framed more sympathetically, sub-hypothesis H1c states the following:

H1c: On average, articles will be more likely to mention personal details about Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees.

As mentioned in the section of framing theory, sourcing can often dictate news framing patterns. In the context of refugee coverage, refugee voice is particularly important, as the aforementioned studies by Toker (2019) and Chouliaraki and Zaborowski (2017) made clear. H1d states the following:

H1d: On average, articles will be more likely to quote or paraphrase Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees.

H2 and its first three sub-hypotheses are predicated on past research suggesting that Western news outlets frame Syrian refugees as threats (see Aswad 2019; Dykstra 2016; and Romano and Porto 2021). H2 and its first three sub-hypotheses, H2a-H2c, are as follows:

H2: The newspapers will be more likely to frame Syrian refugees as threats than Ukrainian refugees.

H2a: On average, articles will be more likely to describe Syrian refugees as aggressors than Ukrainian refugees.

H2b: Articles will be more likely to employ a security/crime crisis frame in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis than the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

H2c: On average, articles about the Syrian refugee crisis will feature more mentions terrorism than articles about the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

Some studies have shown that Western news outlets have framed the Syrian refugee crisis as a border control problem for European nations (see Greussing and Goomgaarden 2017; and Holzberg, Kolbe, and Zaborowski 2018). Based on this prior work, as well as the general assumption that Syrian refugees will be covered more critically than Ukrainian refugees, H2d states the following:

H2d: Articles will be more likely to employ a border control crisis frame in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis than the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

Research has also shown that Muslim refugees, in particular, are framed as hostile (Goodman and Kirkwood 2019). Based on this, as well as the past observation that Islam and Muslims are usually covered negatively in Western news (Ahmed and Matthes 2017), H3 predicts more mentions of Syrian religious identity:

H3: The newspapers will be more likely to mention the religious identities of Syrian refugees than Ukrainian refugees.

Given the importance of sourcing to the framing process (see de Vreese 2005; and Entman 1993), and also the fact that Western officials have often taken explicit, public anti-Muslim, anti-Syrian positions (see Allwright 2018; and Aswad and de Velasco 2020), H4 predicts the following:

H4: On average, the newspapers will be more likely to quote or paraphrase Western officials in articles about the Syrian refugee crisis than in articles about the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

Ramasubramanian and Miles (2018) suggest that Western news outlets frame the Syrian refugee crisis as a political problem for Western nations. Based on this observation, as well as the general assumption that Syrian refugees will receive more critical coverage by American papers, the following hypothesis is put forth:

H5: Articles will be more likely to employ a political crisis frame in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis than the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

Method

To test the proposed hypotheses, this study employed content analysis, a quantitative method appropriate for the systematic analysis of relatively large samples and useful for news content comparisons.

As discussed in the Introduction, the selections of the Ukrainian and Syrian refugee crises were made because the two cases offer a unique opportunity for comparison. Both crises are ongoing and have produced two of the largest refugee crises since World War II (DePillis, Saluja, and Lu 2015; Vierlinger 2022). As mentioned, some analysts have already offered up political and media comparisons based on anecdotal data and observations.

Five elite American newspapers—the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Atlanta Journal Constitution—were selected for analysis. In terms of circulation, these papers are five of the largest in the United States. The selected dailies also provide some degree geographic diversity.

The New York Times and Washington Post were selected because of their overall influence in American society. Both papers have high circulations and are situated on the American East Coast. The Los Angeles Times is the largest and most influential newspaper on the American West Coast, while the Chicago Tribune is the largest and most influential paper in the American Midwest. The Atlanta Journal Constitution was selected because of its standing as one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the American South.

The first three full months of the Ukrainian crisis were selected for analysis—March, April, and May 2022. This was a period of intense refugee migration—by the end of May 2022, more than six million Ukrainians had become refugees, mostly in Europe (Plucinska and Kahn 2022)—as well as political and media discussion and debate.

For the Syrian crisis, articles were selected from the three-month period from 1 August 2015—31 October 2015. This three-month stage was chosen because it represents the heart of what came to be known as “the 2015 European refugee crisis” (see Bauder 2016; Guild et al. 2015; Kinglsey 2016), and corresponds to a period of intense media debate following the tragic death of two-year old Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea while his family tried to escape to Europe.

The unit of analysis was the individual newspaper article. The Proquest database was used to retrieve all refugee crisis articles published during the sample periods in the five newspapers under study. The search terms “Syria,” “Syrians,” and “refugees” were used to retrieve articles about the Syrian refugee crisis, while the search terms “Ukraine,” “Ukrainians,” and “refugees” were used to retrieve articles about the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Only published articles dealing centrally with the refugee crises were examined. Articles that only tangentially mentioned refugees were excluded. Photos were not studied—that is, only text (including headlines and article bodies) was analyzed. In all, 336 articles were studied, all 244 published about the Syrian refugee crisis and all 92 published about the Ukrainian refugee crisis.

Researchers developed a coding sheet consisting of 27 questions. Some coding sheet variables were measured at the nominal level, while others were measured at the ratio level.

The coding sheet examined the length of articles; how many times refugees were described as victims, aggressors, and economic burdens, respectively; positive and negative mentions of refugees; mentions of refugee personal details; terrorism mentions; religious identity mentions; and child refugee mentions. Additionally, a series of dichotomous (yes/no) questions asked about whether political crisis, economic crisis, border control crisis, security/crime crisis, or humanitarian crisis frames were employed in articles.

Two graduate Journalism students served as coders. Multiple rounds of coding scheme training were carried out. Intercoder reliability was measured for all 23 of the coding sheet questions that went beyond basic identification. Reliability for these 23 questions was measured using Scott’s Pi (for eight nominal level questions) and Krippendorf’s Alpha (for 15 questions measured at the ratio level).

Scott’s Pi scores ranged from .64 to 1, with five of eight questions scoring .85 or higher. Because Scott’s Pi scores of .6 or higher are considered acceptable (see Chang et al. 2009; Nuendorf 2002), the three relatively low scoring questions, all of which scored either .64 or .65, were kept in the study. Straight percentage agreement scores for these three variables were 95.6%, 91.2%, and 95.6%, respectively.

Ratio level questions generally produced higher reliability scores, with only two of 15 questions achieving Krippendorf’s Alpha scores of less than .9. One question scored .8 and another .82.

Findings

Overall, the five elite American newspapers under study devoted considerably more attention to the Syrian refugee crisis. During the sampling periods, the papers published a total of 244 articles about the Syrian crisis and 92 about the Ukrainian crisis. Despite this disparity in sheer coverage, results suggest that newspaper framing was more sympathetic toward Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees. As shown in the following section, findings show strong support for most proposed hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1 predicted that published newspaper articles would be more sympathetic to Ukrainian refugees than to Syrian refugees. This hypothesis included four sub-hypotheses, all of which were supported.

Sub-hypothesis H1a predicted that newspaper articles would, on average, feature more mention of Ukrainian child refugees than Syrian child refugees. This sub-hypothesis was supported. In articles about the Ukraine crisis, the studied papers mentioned Ukrainian child refugees 3.83 times per article, on average. Meanwhile, in articles about the Syrian refugee crisis, the papers mentioned Syrian child refugees 2.23 times per article, on average. An independent samples t-test showed that this difference was significant at the .05 level [t(336) = −3.6, p < .001]. Results are displayed in Table 1.

Table 1. Child refugee mentions.

Refugees	Average number of times child refugees mentioned per article
Syrian	2.23
Ukrainian	3.83

t(336) = −3.6, p < .001.

Sub-hypothesis H1b predicted that news articles would be more likely to employ a humanitarian crisis frame in the context of the Ukrainian refugee crisis than in the Syrian refugee crisis. This sub-hypothesis was supported. The papers employed a humanitarian crisis frame in 84.8% of articles about the Ukraine crisis (N = 78), compared to 59% of articles about the Syrian crisis (N = 144). A Chi-square test showed the difference to be statistically significant [χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 19.8, p < .001]. Table 2 shows these results.

Table 2. Humanitarian crisis frame.

Event	Humanitarian crisis frame employed	Humanitarian crisis frame not employed	Total
Syrian refugee crisis	144 (59%)	100 (41%)	244 (100%)
Ukrainian refugee crisis	78 (84.8%)	14 (15.2%)	92 (100%)
Total	222 (66.1%)	114 (33.9%)	336 (100%)

χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 19.8, p < .001.

Sub-hypothesis H1c predicted that articles would, on average, be more likely to mention personal details about Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees. This sub-hypothesis was also supported. An average of 7.72 personal details per article were provided about Ukrainian refugees, compared to 5.59 personal details per article about Syrian refugees. This difference was found to be statistically significant [t(336) = −2.1, p = .027]. These results can be found in Table 3.

Table 3. Refugee personal details mentioned.

Refugees	Average number of times personal details mentioned per article
Syrian	5.59
Ukrainian	7.72

t(336) = −2.1, p = .027.

Sub-hypothesis H1d predicted that, on average, articles would be more likely to quote or paraphrase Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees. Findings showed support for this sub-hypothesis. Ukrainian refugees were quoted or paraphrased an average of 5.16 times per article, compared to 3.05 times per article for Syrian refugees. As Table 4 shows, this difference was statistically significant [t(336) = −3.2, p = .002].

Table 4. Refugees quoted/paraphrased.

Refugees	Average number of times refugees quoted/paraphrased per article
Syrian	3.05
Ukrainian	5.16

t(336) = −3.2, p = .002.

Hypothesis 2, which also included four sub-hypotheses, predicted that the newspapers would be more likely to frame Syrian refugees as threats than Ukrainian refugees. All four sub-hypotheses were supported.

Sub-hypothesis H2a predicted that articles would, on average, be more likely to describe Syrian refugees as aggressors than Ukrainian refugees. This sub-hypotheses was supported. On average, Syrians refugees were described as aggressors .20 times per article. Ukrainian refugees were never described as aggressors. The difference was statistically significant [t(336) = 5.3, p < .001]. Results are displayed in Table 5.

Table 5. Refugees described as aggressors.

Refugees	Average number of times described as aggressors per article
Syrian	.20
Ukrainian	.00

t(336) = 5.3, p < .001.

Sub-hypothesis H2b predicted that news reports would be more likely to employ a security/crime frame in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis than the Ukrainian refugee crisis. As Table 6 shows, this sub-hypothesis was supported. In all, 8.6% of reports about the Syrian refugee crisis (N = 21) employed a security/crime crisis frame. No reports about the Ukrainian crisis employed a security/crime crisis frame. A chi-square test showed this framing difference to be statistically significant [χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 8.4, p = .004].

Table 6. Security/crime crisis frame.

Event	Security/crime crisis frame employed	Security/crime crisis frame not employed	Total
Syrian refugee crisis	21 (8.6%)	223 (91.4%)	244 (100%)
Ukrainian refugee crisis	0 (0%)	92 (100%)	92 (100%)
Total	21 (6.3%)	315 (93.8%)	336 (100%)

χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 8.4, p = .004.

Sub-hypothesis H2c predicted that articles about the Syrian refugee crisis would, on average, feature more mentions of terrorism than articles about the Ukrainian refugee crisis. This sub-hypothesis was also supported. On average, articles about the Syrian refugee crisis featured .18 mentions of terrorism, compared to just .02 mentions of terrorism for articles about the Ukrainian crisis. An independent samples t-test showed that the difference was statistically significant at the .05 level [t(336) = 3.5, p < .001]. Table 7 displays results.

Table 7. Terrorism mentions.

Refugees	Average number of times terrorism per article
Syrian	.18
Ukrainian	.02

t(336) = 3.5, p < .001.

Sub-hypothesis H2d predicted that studied newspapers would be more likely to employ a border control crisis frame in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis than the Ukrainian refugee crisis. This sub-hypothesis was supported. A border control crisis frame was employed in 29.9% of articles about the Syrian refugee crisis (N = 73), compared to just 10.9% (N = 10) of Ukraine refugee crisis articles. This difference was found to be statistically significant [χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 13.0, p < .001]. Findings are displayed in Table 8.

Table 8. Border control crisis frame.

Event	Border control crisis frame employed	Border control crisis frame not employed	Total
Syrian refugee crisis	73 (29.9%)	171 (70.1%)	244 (100%)
Ukrainian refugee crisis	10 (10.9%)	82 (89.1%)	92 (100%)
Total	83 (24.7%)	253 (75.3%)	336 (100%)

χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 13.0, p < .001.

Hypothesis 3 predicted that studied papers would be more likely to mention the religious identities of Syrian refugees than Ukrainian refugees. H3 was not supported. Although the papers did mention the religious identifies of Syrian refugees (22.1%) more than Ukrainian refugees (9.8%), the observed difference was not statistically significant at the .05 level [χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 6.7, p = .010]. Table 9 displays results.

Table 9. Mention of religious identity.

Event	Religious identity mentioned	Religious identity not mentioned	Total
Syrian refugee crisis	54 (22.1%)	190 (77.9%)	244 (100%)
Ukrainian refugee crisis	9 (9.8%)	83 (90.2%)	92 (100%)
Total	63 (18.8%)	273 (81.2%)	336 (100%)

χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 6.7, p = .010.

Hypothesis 4 predicted that newspapers would, on average, be more likely to quote or paraphrase Western officials in articles about the Syrian refugee crisis than in articles about the Ukrainian refugee crisis. This hypothesis was supported. Western officials were quoted or paraphrased significantly more, on average, in articles about Syrian refugees (M = 5.18) than in articles about Ukrainian refugees (M = 2.26). This difference was found to be statistically significant [t(336) = 5.9, p < .001]. Results are displayed in Table 10.

Table 10. Western officials quoted/paraphrased.

Refugees	Average number of times western officials quoted/paraphrased per article
Syrian	5.18
Ukrainian	2.26

t(336) = 5.9, p < .001.

Hypothesis 5 predicted that articles would be more likely to employ a political crisis frame in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis than the Ukrainian refugee crisis. This hypothesis was supported. A political crisis frame was employed in 48.8% of articles about the Syrian refugee crisis, compared to just 15.2% of articles about the Ukrainian refugee crisis. As shown in Table 11, the difference was statistically significant [χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 31.5, p < .001].

Table 11. Political crisis frame.

Event	Political crisis frame employed	Political crisis frame not employed	Total
Syrian refugee crisis	119 (48.8%)	125 (51.2%)	244 (100%)
Ukrainian refugee crisis	14 (15.2%)	78 (84.8%)	92 (100%
Total	133 (39.6%)	203 (60.4%)	336 (100%)

χ² (df = 1, N = 336) = 31.5, p < .001.

Discussion

The goal of this content analysis was to comparatively analyze coverage of the Ukrainian and Syrian refugee crises in five elite American newspapers. In light of general trends previous literature has revealed when it comes to Western media coverage of refugees, the study predicted that newspaper coverage would be more empathetic toward the Ukrainian refugees than their Syrian counterparts.

Almost all hypotheses and sub-hypotheses were supported. It was strikingly clear from the findings that the newspapers had a much higher tendency to humanize Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees. For example, roughly 85 percent of news articles about Ukrainian refugees employed a humanitarian crisis frame, compared to only 59% of articles about Syrian refugees. Moreover, on a per article basis, Ukrainian refugees were more likely to be quoted or paraphrased (M = 5.16) than Syrian refugees (M = 3.05). Another difference in this context is that, on average, examined newspaper articles were significantly more likely to mention personal details about Ukrainian refugees (M = 7.72) than Syrian refugees (M = 5.59).

Perhaps the most striking finding was the newspapers’ tendency to frame Syrian refugees as threats, something which the papers rarely did with Ukrainian refugees. Syrian refugees were described as aggressors .20 times per article, while Ukrainian refugees were never described as aggressors. Also, articles about Syrian refugees included more mentions of terrorism (M = .18) than articles about Ukrainian refugees (M = .02). Studied newspapers were also much more likely to employ security/crisis and border control crisis frames in reports about Syrian refugees than in reports about Ukrainian refugees. The security/crime frame was adopted in 8.6% of reports about the Syrian crisis (compared to none in the Ukrainian crisis). Meanwhile, the border control crisis frame was used in almost 30 percent of articles about the Syrian refugee crisis (compared to less than 11% in articles about the Ukrainian refugee crisis).

While all the above findings point decidedly toward more positive framing of Ukrainian refugees, one finding seems to stand out as contradictory, at least at first glance: Syrian refugees received considerably more attention than Ukrainian refugees. During the respective three-month sample periods, the studied newspapers wrote 244 reports about the Syrian refugee crisis and only 92 reports about the Ukrainian crisis. The fact that Syrian refugees were covered much more than their Ukrainian counterparts can be possibly attributed to the negative politicization of the Syrian refugee issue in U.S. political circles. Some U.S. politicians seemed to adopt “a nationalist approach” (Romero 2019, 33) that fundamentally opposed Syrian (and other Muslim) refugees. The Ukrainian refugee crisis, on the other hand, was not similarly politicized in Europe. In fact, there was little political resistance to the influx of Ukrainian refugees in the European countries that hosted them (Aslund 2022).

Total coverage is not necessarily a sign of media sympathy. While attention to an issue can, in some cases, be an indication of support, it is also possible for media outlets to devote significant negative attention to prominent public issues. This has been the case, for instance, with terrorist attacks perpetrated by Muslims, which often generate more coverage than similar attacks committed by non-Muslims (Kearns, Betus, and Lemieux 2019). Therefore, it is possible that the sheer attention allotted to the Syrian refugee crisis could be rooted in America’s tradition of anti-Islam media discourses (Bail 2014; Said 1997), fearmongering about Arab immigrants, or something else.

This interpretation supports the patterns described in the literature review showing a tendency on the part of many Western media to dehumanize Arab and Muslim refugees, associate them with terrorism and aggression, and frame them as an alien “Other” (See Goodman and Kirkwood 2019). In fact, it can be argued that negative framing of Arab and Muslim refugees is a microcosm of a more holistic orientalist approach in Western media coverage of Arabs and Muslims in general. Orientalism was described by Said (1985) as “the division between Orient and Occident” (90). This “us versus them” division, or binary opposition between Arabs and Westerners or Muslims and non-Muslims, has often been reflected in Western media coverage of Muslim minorities and refugees (Abdul Basit 2018).

In this context, Wigger (2019) points to a media pattern of framing “migrant Muslim men as representatives of a religion of backward and patriarchal outsiders, unfamiliar with … [the West’s] basic rules and values” (22). It is clear that this negative framing is not just a reflection of an orientalist approach that looks down on non-Western immigrants, but also representative of an Islamophobic trend that has become more predominant in the West, including the United States, after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks (see Ibrahim 2010). This framing, which has become more generic in Western media coverage of Arab and Muslim immigrants, has created an Islamophobic environment for diasporic Arabs and Muslims, one in which they have been “pigeonholed as threatening subjects and mongrels that act in contrast with, and antagonistically to peace and world order” (Acim 2019, 28). The current study, just like most scholarly studies analyzing Western media coverage of Arab refugees and diaspora, points to the critical role played by Western media outlets in helping to create and cement negative discourse about Arabs and Muslims in the West.

The location of the newspapers under study is important and worth exploring. A question that poses itself in the context of this study’s findings is this: why are elite American newspapers more sympathetic to Ukrainian refugees despite basic statistical realities showing Syrian refugees have not overburdened the United States? The website Statista shows that since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011, fewer than 28,000 Syrian refugees have been admitted into the U.S. (Statista.com 2021a). This number seems miniscule when compared to the much larger numbers of Syrian refugees in several European countries. For instance, Germany has received close to 665,000 Syrian refugees; Sweden has admitted 113,000, and Austria has more than 67,500 (Statista.com 2021b). Moreover, and importantly, the United States has already received more Ukrainian refugees than Syrian refugees, despite the fact that the Ukraine crisis is more recent (Kennedy 2022).

What compounds the suffering of diasporic Muslims in general, and Syrian refugees in particular, is the vulnerability of their positions in Western societies (Beydoun 2018; Mendola and Pera 2021), as well as their inability to fight back against seemingly ongoing and predominant media misrepresentations. This draws attention to the need for further content research on other framing trends in Western media reportage of ethnically diverse refugees, as well as ethnographic newsroom work to understand the news production contexts which lead to the coverage outputs uncovered in this and other research.

One limitation in this research is related to the general constraints of quantitative content analysis as an approach. The approach is generally good for identifying dominant patterns of text, but not as useful for uncovering implicit, hidden meanings or providing nuanced explanations, ideological or other, for why patterns exist. Future research could address these limitations by using the sociology of news approach, which is useful for explaining the underlying reasons for content patterns.

Another limitation of this research concerns the differences between the two selected crises and the time that lapsed between them. Both crises brought to bear a series of very different political concerns, both for countries in Europe as well as the United States. The realities of the Syrian crisis, which started years before the Ukrainian crisis, may have effectively primed world leaders and media outlets to construct visions for addressing the Ukraine crisis. It is possible, then, that racism, Islamophobia, and Othering do not account for all of the framing differences uncovered in this analysis. Indeed, some of the identified differences may relate more to the basic political realities of the two crises.

Acknowledgements

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

Disclosure Statement

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