Local and National Accounts of Immigration Framing in a Cross-national Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this article is to identify whether differences exist in local and national news framing of immigration. Using 12 years (2001–2012) of print media data from 15 Canadian and British print media sources, this article presents the first attempt to look for systematic differences in cross-city, within-country and cross-national framing on the subject of immigration. Contextual variables such as change in the unemployment rate and in the rate of foreign-born within cities and countries are introduced to test the robustness of the findings from a computer-automated content analysis. Findings suggest that, contrary to expectations, there is little by way of systematic evidence that national and local newspapers frame immigration according to different concerns. Furthermore, cross-city news coverage does not vary based on local contextual factors such as changes in the unemployment rate or rate of foreign-born. Indeed, it would appear that there is little evidence to support hypotheses that local coverage attends only to the ‘local consequences’ of immigration such as crime and unemployment, and that national concerns such as border security and broader economic outlook are solely the purview of national media. Rather, there are far fewer differences in the content and tone of immigration framing among print news sources than conventional wisdom might suggest.