Migrants in the media: a quantitative analysis of print media in Spain, Belgium and Germany in the context of the upcoming 2019 European elections.

The matter of migrant related discourses has been a prominent theme in political debates and public discussions leading up to the European elections. The ways in which migration and migrants are framed in the discourse encompases how migration is percieved and constructed in the general consciousness, and has an observable effect on political developments around the world. Media portrayals of migrants influences local communities’ perception and openness to newcomers. Entrance into a community requires participation from both the migrants, and the local communities. This research has been pursued in order to better understand the discursive way in which migrants are being contextualized in the media in three European countries. This study offers a quantitative analysis of nine online newspapers from Germany, Spain and Belgium. Data has been gathered over a two month period to create a lexical database that can be regarded as a whole, or observed as lexical developments over the two months leading up to the elections. To conduct the quantitative analysis, the researchers used TXM, a digital tool that supports the statistical analysis of large volumes of text. Through creating a lexical corpus, the researchers have codified recurring words and “lexical environments” of keywords that the researchers specifically targeted. Analyzing the results against a literary review of previous analysis for each of the three countries provides us with a point of analysis of how migrants are being presented in the discourse. This work is designed to help better understand the ways in which migrants are being depicted to local populations as this framing has been shown to affect voting patterns and the political landscape.