Media representation of immigration in the Chilean written press during 2015–2019

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current migration flows in Chile have undergone changes and transformations that have impacted the country and its public policies, which, in turn, has echoed in the media. By employing media framing and a longitudinal content analysis of the media corpus, the main objective of this article is to critically scrutinize media frames of immigration in Chilean local written press during 2015–2019. The analysis results demonstrate that the three newspapers represent immigration based on the statistical frames and public policies. The first frame places the phenomenon of immigration quantitatively, stating its existence and importance in terms of supposed massiveness. The second frame allows qualitatively characterizing the phenomenon, establishing it as a problem for the state regarding public policies. The study demonstrates little media pluralism in the corpus. It concludes that the three newspapers follow a similar media agenda on immigration by reproducing official speeches directly related to the dominant political agenda.