Framing immigration: a content analysis of newspapers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States

ABSTRACT

This study examines the media framings of immigration in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Using a content analysis of over 1700 newspaper articles published in 2014 in different cases, my findings show that, regardless of context, the media use a small number of frames to stereotype, generalize and reduce immigration to a singular dimension. My analysis also suggests that the media do not always only have a binary representation of bad or good immigrants. Instead, the media's othering of immigrants is a complex process, suggesting ambivalence despite superficial affirmation. Although my findings also demonstrate that some national differences exist, common patterns can be found across contexts that share similar historical, cultural, social, economic, and political dimensions of immigration. As one of the first cross-regional comparisons of media framings, this research reflects the power dynamics between the elites and immigrants and offers implications for how the media's reinforcement of stereotypes and outsider status of immigrants could potentially shape public opinion and policies regarding immigration.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• migration
• media
• framing
• content analysis
• Asia
• Europe
• North America

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Context is referred to the historical, demographic, economic, and political context of immigration. Details are explained the “Immigration in Cross-Regional Contexts” section.

2 Non-traditional media are more open to contributions made by ordinary citizens, preventing me from capturing the power dynamics between the elites and immigrants.

3 I examine newspapers that have the most readership in the nation and that represent ideological diversity ranging from conservative to liberal. The UK is an exception, with the top three most circulated newspapers being tabloids: The Sun, Daily Mail. and Metro. My initial search of the articles in Daily Mail and Metro does not result in a substantial number of articles to analyze (less than 10 each on the randomly selected days). However, The Sun offers enough articles to analyze. Given that it is the most circulated newspaper outlet in the UK, its inclusion is necessary to understand how the mainstream media frame immigration in the UK Furthermore, The Daily Telegraph and The Times are less ideologically diverse than newspapers in other countries as they are more right-wing and centered. However, the liberal media in the UK, such as The Guardian, does not make it to top five in terms of readership. To ensure that I truly capture the mainstream discourse, as well as the source from which most people receive information, I sample The Daily Telegraph and The Times. Such decision may result in a limitation of a comprehensive picture of a diverse variety of media frame immigration in the UK; at the same time, my selection of British newspapers reflect what is most read in the country.

4 All newspapers in these cases share the same liberal model of the media system (Hallin and Mancini 2004).

5 While the term “asylum seeker” may be used more frequently in the UK than in other cases, it is crucial to include asylum seekers as they are a substantive group of migrants. Excluding them may result in a bias in my sample. Moreover, the term “refugee” is also included in my keyword search of the HK, US, and Taiwan media in both English and Mandarin to avoid under-sampling immigration related to asylum-seeking.

6 Although international students are often excluded in prior studies, my analysis includes them because like other immigrants, they live in a country for an extended period and may have the intention to stay beyond their programs. In the UK, for example, international students outnumber refugees in recent years and are also accounted for the net migration statistics utilized by policymakers (Blinder and Allen 2016).

7 Some articles are indirectly related to immigration but are still coded. For example, an article may be about the opening of a community center where an immigrant is quoted suggesting the integration aspect of immigrants in the community. Thus, articles like these are not ignored in my analysis.

8 The inter-coding agreement of each variable is cross-examined in two steps. The first two coders code all newspapers articles in the sample. We reach an average agreement at 0.94 in Holsti's coefficient. To further ensure that the coding agreement is reliable, the next two coders code 25% of the newspaper articles in the sample that is randomly selected. I then run a Krippendorff's alpha test and reach a score of 0.89. The bootstrapping also shows that there is a 2.98% chance that the Kalpha would be lower than 0.80 (a score that is considered a good reliability test) if the entire sample is included.

9 See the Appendix for details about the codebook.

10 This paper does not examine the identity of immigrants or the type of immigration in the media like some literature does (e.g. Blinder and Allen 2016). Thus, any article that highlights immigrants' identity or immigration type as illegal would not be coded as ICF, which is strictly reporting related to criminal activities.

11 Specific details about findings on only news items can be found in Table A2 in the Appendix, which shows that the results do not change much.

12 ECF, which goes hand in hand with ETF, is one of the least employed frames in all four cases. It is especially unlikely to see ECF in the US media (at only 2%). My study cannot explain the reason why ECF is under-employed, even in cases like HK and Taiwan, where migrant labor is often considered relevant and necessary. However, it suggests that perhaps even in cases where migrant labor is systematically imported by the government and considered crucial by the public, immigrants cannot be recognized for their economic contribution. This finding also has important implications as studies show that economic contribution frames are less likely to stimulate readers to problematize immigration (Igartua, Moral-Toranzo, and Fernández 2011).

13 The majority of HK's and Taiwan's citizens are of Han descendants that have migrated from China since the 16th century with a peak during the 1949 Chinese Civil war. More recently, HK and Taiwan receive many marriage migrants from China and Southeast Asia.

14 The majority of immigrants are marriage or labor migrants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Pennsylvania State University College of Lliberal Arts RGSO Award.