Famulari, Major research immigration framing in news media
Left-leaning news websites focus more often on immigrant victimization, while right-leaning outlets emphasize threat, according to a study conducted by doctoral candidate Umberto Famulari and associate professor Lesa Hatley Major.
The study, “News stories and images of immigration online: A quantitative analysis of digital-native and traditional news websites of different political orientations and social media engagement,” examined 1,200 stories and 1,200 photographs to see how news websites represented immigration in frames, topics and visual frames. The research also analyzed social media engagement to understand how people react to news content.
According to the study, which was published in the Atlantic Journal of Communication, the trend was even more pronounced among digital-native news websites. Traditional left-leaning news sites generated the highest number of social media interactions.