A security threat or an economic consequence? An analysis of the news framing of the European Union's refugee crisis

Abstract

A developing literature on the securitisation of immigration documents the prominence of security-based framing, but its prevalence has not been systematically established in Central and Eastern Europe through an analysis of the relative importance of various immigration-related frames. Using content analysis, this study tests the securitisation of the immigration thesis in the coverage of the refugee crisis between 2013 and 2016 in Czech and Slovak media ( N = 7,910), in particular focusing on frame variation over time, and on differences between quality and tabloid media. The results reveal that the security-threat frame is the dominant frame, while economic framing is significantly less frequent in regard to the topic. While both quality media and tabloids employ the security-threat frame often, it is significantly more prominent in tabloids. In sum, these results confirm the existence of a pre-eminent securitised interpretation of immigration in the region during the crisis.