Media Framing Fuels Refugee Stigma

Every day, newspapers publish stories that represent migrants and refugees in highly politicised ways with a focus on tragic events, numbers of migrants entering a country, and their implicit threat to the host country’s culture and well-being. Media representations often make use of sensationalist headlines and stories that represent migrants as victims, threats, or burdens, which may or may not evoke pity in readers, but essentially fail to portray migrants as human beings by contextualising their experiences within the broader and shared global political landscape. While a straw-man fallacy may position media stories ‘just as words and interpretations of events’, the relentless hostility of the language and images used by the media have a powerful influence on disrupting societal cohesion and reinforcing social inequalities—and most importantly, discriminatory media depictions directly affect the sense of identity and well-being of migrants and refugees themselves.

Media Framing and the Influence of Media Representations

Entman’s (1991, 1993) framing theory describes how journalists use framing by emphasising certain aspects of a story to influence the readership’s interpretation, understanding, and reaction to the reported events in the newspaper story. These frames are operationalised using specific keywords, metaphors, stereotypical images, concepts, and symbols to present a topic from a particular perspective by drawing on culturally shared knowledge and reasoning, meanwhile omitting or downplaying other perspectives.

Gabrielatos and colleagues (2008) examined how refugees and asylum seekers, and to a lesser extent immigrants and migrants, were portrayed in UK press articles published between 1996 and 2005. Their findings showed newspapers used nonsensical and misleading terms such as "illegal" refugees or asylum seekers, or "genuine" immigrants, revealing ignorance and blatant negative bias. These dominant representations evoke fear and suspicion, shaping a public discourse that focuses on border securitisation and deterrence.

Gendered Representations and the "Good" vs. "Bad" Migrant

Ryan and Tonkiss (2022) explored a combined visual analysis of British tabloid newspaper coverage of refugees. Their findings showed that men are portrayed through a criminal lens, with the vast majority of lone adult men depicted as police mugshots, within a courtroom setting, with handcuffs, and words such as "criminal," "suspicious," and "guilty." In contrast, refugee women were depicted with children at a campsite or inside a tent, thus positioning women as maternal, passive, and vulnerable, and infusing a sense of genuineness of their refugee status compared to the representations of men. These gendered representations highlight the dichotomous representation by oversimplifying complex lived experiences between "good" refugees who are deserving of protection and "bad" refugees who are a threat to national security and social order.

Moral Panic Around Separated Migrant Children

A study by Rosen and Crafter (2018) explored how separated children were presented in British newspapers between the introduction of the Dubs Amendment, which committed to relocating unaccompanied minors to the UK, and the demolition of the unofficial refugee camp in Calais. Initially, separated child migrants were depicted in sympathetic terms, such as "scared," "traumatised," and "blameless" for their state of affairs, with their "vulnerability" referred to repeatedly. However, the tenor of the coverage began to change in the first weeks of October 2016, when more separated children began arriving in the UK. The tone changed from a humanitarian frame to a focus on questioning the authenticity of separated children, who were increasingly depicted as older than claimed—for example, the word "child" began to appear in scare quotes alongside references to physical descriptions attributed to adult bodies: their "stubble," "receding hairlines," "hairy arms," and "crow’s feet." Concurrently, there was also a sharp rise in security frames in which separated child migrants arriving in Britain were implicated. Creating and feeding a moral panic and a climate of fear, the media shifted from presenting separated children as "at risk," deserving of care and protection, to "the risk," as potentially illegal and deceitful "risk-takers" undeserving of protection. Separated children were no longer presented as victims; instead, the British people were depicted as victims.

Prejudices and Mental Health in Refugee Youth

As shown above, newspapers are a powerful tool to shape public opinion and create discriminatory representations of migrants and refugees. Despite the awareness of the interaction between discrimination, mental health problems, and social adaptation in young refugees, there is only limited research to shed further insight. Montgomery and Foldspang (2007) provided critical evidence from Denmark on experiences of discrimination, where they studied 131 young Middle Eastern refugees with an average age of 15.3 years. Nearly all participants had traumatic premigration experiences—for example, 93 percent had lived in a war zone and refugee camp, nearly 75 percent had witnessed violence, over 70 percent had parent(s) who were imprisoned, and over 50 percent had parent(s) who were tortured. However, it was not only their past experience that impacted their mental health, but also their post-migration experience of discrimination in Denmark. Over 65 percent of the youth were victims of derogatory remarks, 20 percent had been attacked, and over 30 percent witnessed a physical attack. Male participants were a particular target, with a strong correlation between gender and being denied entry to social spaces such as discotheques, representing a symbolic and literal exclusion from engaging in the host society. The study also found that discrimination was closely associated with internalising symptoms such as depression and anxiety, and reduced social adaptation. Young age, however, was found to be somewhat of a protective factor. While the study did not make direct links between discriminatory media portrayals of refugees and discrimination, it suggests that societal hostile attitudes and discriminatory behaviour undermine a young refugee’s capacity to adjust in the host country, and impact their sense of belonging and mental health.

Conclusion

Newspaper representations of migrants and refugees can affect both public perceptions and the well-being of those affected. Research shows how negative media representations impact the creation and reinforcement of discriminatory attitudes and social exclusion. To ensure a more inclusive society, the media has a clear responsibility to shift towards more balanced and nuanced portrayals that foster compassion.