Risk Narratives on Immigration During the COVID-19 Crisis in Italy: A Comparative Analysis of Facebook Posts Published by Politicians and by News media

Abstract

This work explores how the narrative on immigration changes when society is threatened by “real” risks, i.e., during the COVID-19 health crisis. We compared the frequency and engagement of over 348,684 posts published on Facebook between December 2019 and November 2020 by Italian politicians and news media. We identified two waves of “tangible crisis” assuming that in these two periods the risk stemming from COVID-19 was strongly perceived by the Italian population, contrasting our observations to the periods preceding the first wave and between both waves. Our findings suggest that the political discourse and risk narratives on immigration decreased during times of “tangible crises” for right-wing populist parties and news media. This happened at a time when key policies regarding immigration and regularization of migrants were highly discussed by the Italian government, receiving unexpectedly low reactions. This leads us to theorize that anti-immigrant communication decreases during times of “tangible crises.”