Picturing immigration: how the media criminalizes immigrants

ABSTRACT

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that the way the press frames policy issues can foster fear, particularly with respect to portrayals of immigrants. Building on this research, we examine images of immigrants, borders, and legality in the media’s coverage of immigration. To do so, we collect a unique dataset of images appearing in three major national news magazines’ articles about immigration or immigrants in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. We code the images based on whether they include visual representations of the border and immigration enforcement, whether illegality and/or criminal behavior is shown or implied, and the activities in which the immigrants are engaged. We find that the press frequently portrays immigrants as undocumented, presenting images of the border as well as immigrant arrests and detentions. Moreover, when immigrants are working, they are disproportionately engaged in low-skilled activities. Our analysis demonstrates a general tendency to frame immigrants in a negative light, consistent with a “threat” narrative but inconsistent with actual immigrant demographics. Our findings are particularly important in light of research establishing that such portrayals contribute to more hostile attitudes about immigration in the U.S. as well as greater support for punitive immigration policy among Whites.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• illegality
• image analysis
• framing
• mass media
• Latina/o Politics

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Alyssa Clark, Stephanie Shady, Chanel Vismara, Kallie McLaughlin, and Lauren Meininger for their excellent research assistance, and to Erin Cassese and Amy Erica Smith for their helpful feedback. Additionally, we are thankful to Texas Wesleyan University for their library access to the newsmagazine stories.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Consistent with the Associated Press stylebook, we use the terms “undocumented” or “unauthorized” immigrant rather than “illegal immigrant” to refer to individuals residing in the U.S. without legal status (Weiner 2013).

2 Since we were particularly interested in the ways in which immigrants were portrayed during that time period, we eliminated cartoons, historical images, and author photographs from our sample. We included all images in which the subjects were either identified as immigrants or implied as such, as well as all images of non-immigrants or images without individuals. To facilitate tests of intercoder reliability, before giving the images to the RAs, we assigned each individual a number, differentiating between immigrants and non-immigrants. We excluded one event that drew press attention during this time period, the 2000 case of Elián González, given public disagreements over the case and immigrant status. We also excluded images containing large groups of protesters, common during the 2006 and 2007 congressional consideration of immigration reform, in which individuals’ status as immigrants or non-immigrants could not easily be determined.

3 RAs were instructed to code based on their initial reaction to the photo, and were allowed to use headlines and captions to inform their interpretation of the photos, if appropriate.

4 Both RAs coded each image in our dataset. The results reported are from one research assistant after running an intercoder reliability check of all images. For all data reported, Cohen’s kappa >0.75 (Dewey 1983).

Additional information

Funding

We are thankful to The Fund for Latino Scholarship from The American Political Science Association and to Clark University and Texas Christian University for their generous support of our research.