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Essentially Criminals: a Transatlantic Content Analysis of Immigration Coverage and Readers’ Reactions

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Essentially Criminals: a Transatlantic Content Analysis of Immigration Coverage and Readers’ Reactions ESSENTIALLY CRIMINALS: A TRANSATLANTIC CONTENT ANALYSIS OF IMMIGRATION COVERAGE AND READERS’ REACTIONS by FRANCESCO SOMAINI A DISSERTATION Presented to the School of Journalism and Communication and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2014 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Francesco Somaini Title: Essentially Criminals: A Transatlantic Content Analysis of Immigration Coverage and Readers’ Reactions This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the School of Journalism and Communication by: Dr. Scott R. Maier Chair Dr. Patricia A. Curtin Core Member Dr. Peter D. Laufer Core Member Dr. Claudia Holguín Mendoza Institutional Representative and J. Andrew Berglund Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded September 2014 ii 2014 Francesco Somaini This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Francesco Somaini Doctor of Philosophy School of Journalism and Communication September 2014 Title: Essentially Criminals: A Transatlantic Content Analysis of Immigration Coverage and Readers’ Reactions This dissertation investigated the relationship between news coverage of immigration and readers’ reaction to such coverage. Quantitative content analysis was used to study the subject with a comparative approach across regions that constitute borderlands between first and second world countries: the state of Arizona in the United States of America and Italy in the European Union. Coders analyzed content of 800 stories published by four daily newspapers in 2013. Degree of antipathy or sympathy for immigrants was assessed from 1,470 online comments posted by readers of those stories. Hypotheses stemming from theories of national identity were tested to evaluate frames used to talk about immigration in the outlets considered and audiences’ feedback while controlling for regional particularities. News coverage of immigration was generally unfavorable to immigrants in both Arizona and Italy. Readers commenting online on immigration did generally not empathize with immigrants. No statistically significant correlation was found between degree of antipathy or sympathy for immigrants expressed in online comments and stories’ degree of unfavorableness or favorability to immigrants. The study also concluded that the Associated Press style change banning “illegal immigrant” from a iv journalist’s vocabulary resulted in a sharp decrease of use of the phrase in the pair of Arizona dailies examined. Frames criminalizing immigrants appeared with comparable frequency across all four newspapers considered. Nationalistic and patriotic attitudes recorded in the studies carried out across multiple countries did not provide the sociological lens suited to explaining the tone of journalistic coverage of immigration addressed in this study and the public’s reaction to such coverage. However, stories framed episodically provided more positive representations of immigrants than stories framed thematically, and readers’ reaction seemed less antipathetic to immigrants. Previous comparative research of immigration coverage recommended that journalists write fewer human interest stories and more articles providing context and analysis of the issue. Representations of immigrants in the four dailies and attitudes emerging from online comments analyzed in this study, instead, suggest that journalists should focus on human interest stories to reframe immigration issues and reverse the often stereotypical nature of immigration coverage. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Francesco Somaini GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano (Switzerland) DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Media Studies, 2014, University of Oregon Master of Science, Communication Sciences, 2001, Università della Svizzera Italiana AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Newspapers (print and online) Online and participatory journalism User-generated content International communication Ethnic studies Sociolinguistics Minorities in the media Immigration policies and news coverage PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Reporter, Corriere del Ticino, Muzzano (Switzerland), 2001- 2010 Reporter, laRegione Ticino Bellinzona (Switzerland), 1996- 2001 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Kappa Tau Alpha journalism honor society, University of Oregon, inducted 2014 Center on Diversity and Community Graduate Summer Research Award, 2013 The Columbia Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2011-2013 Lucien P. Arant Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2010, 2011, 2014 vi PUBLICATIONS: Somaini, F. (2014). Portrayals of Immigrants in Borderland Newspapers: Does Proximity to Entry Points matter? International Communication Research Journal. (under review) Somaini F. (2014). Media Consolidation in the Italian Switzerland: Conflicting Interests. Political Economy of Communication. (under review) vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my committee members individually for their contributions to this project and their guidance throughout the doctoral program: Dr. Scott Maier, Dr. Pat Curtin, Dr. Peter Laufer, Dr. Claudia Holguin. I also wish to thank my wife, Patrizia Chirco, for her invaluable support. She believed in me to the point she followed me 6,000 miles from our first home and helped me pursue this dream. I owe my physical and mental health to her. Not only. Hers are many research ideas and insights that culminated in this work. This research was supported in part by an award from the University of Oregon Center on Diversity and Community and by grants from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. viii Per Gaia. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Background ............................................................................................................ 4 Other Similarities ................................................................................................... 10 II. LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................ 16 Moral Panic ............................................................................................................ 16 National Identity, Nationalism, Patriotism ............................................................ 18 Stereotypes ............................................................................................................. 25 Online Media ......................................................................................................... 27 Agenda-Setting ...................................................................................................... 30 Framing .................................................................................................................. 30 Hypotheses and Research Questions ..................................................................... 36 III. METHOD .............................................................................................................. 41 Population .............................................................................................................. 42 Sampling Stories .................................................................................................... 44 Coding Stories ........................................................................................................ 45 Sampling Comments .............................................................................................. 48 Coding Comments ................................................................................................. 48 Intercoder Reliability ............................................................................................. 49 Analysis.................................................................................................................. 51 IV. FINDINGS ............................................................................................................. 53 Research Questions ................................................................................................ 53 Immigration Stories by Section, Format, Subject .............................................. 53 Thematic and Episodic Frames .......................................................................... 59 Favorable and Unfavorable Stories by Format, Section, Subject ....................... 61 Favorable and Unfavorable Stories by Episodic or Thematic Frame ................. 67 Bylines ................................................................................................................ 70 Disclosure of Immigration Status by Section, Format, Subject ......................... 71 Prominence of Frames ........................................................................................ 79 Hypotheses ............................................................................................................. 79 Degree of Antipathy or Sympathy for Immigrants in Editorials,
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