U.S. immigration and media bias surrounding the reporting of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) immigration policies

Abstract

In 2012, President Barack Obama used his executive power to bypass Congress and unilaterally pass a controversial immigration policy called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and two years later its successor, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents immigration policy. This MRP explores whether a media slant is salient in the editorial reporting surrounding these policies from two major U.S. political networks‐‐ The FOX News Channel (FOX) and the Cable News Network (CNN). Previous academic research (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009; Stroud, 2007) has indicated that CNN’s audience tends to be left-leaning favoring the Democratic Party, while rightleaning conservative Republicans tune into FOX for their political information (Gil de Zúñiga, Correa and Valenzuela, 2012). Keeping this in consideration, would the political networks tailor its digital editorial content to mimic its audiences’ political preference? Borrowing from Benson and Wood’s (2015) media frames surrounding undocumented immigration, a framing analysis and a textual content analysis were employed on the digital editorial content published by FOX and CNN from July 2014 and February 2015. The findings revealed that both networks published messaging aligned with its audiences’ political affiliation. The FOX News Channel emphasized how undocumented immigrants were a problem for society and authorities and published content which contained anti‐Democrat rhetoric and was acutely critical of President Obama. Conversely, the framing analysis revealed the Cable News Network was more likely to accentuate the problems for immigrants and defend President Obama and his unilateral exercises of constitutional powers.