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.移民相关话语议题已成为欧洲选举前夕政治辩论与公共讨论中的核心议题。话语体系中对移民与移民议题的框架设定，既反映了大众意识中对移民问题的认知与建构过程，也对全球范围内的政治发展产生了可观测的影响。媒体对移民的形象塑造，会影响当地社区对新移民的认知与包容态度。移民融入社区，需要移民与当地社区双方的共同参与。本研究旨在深入理解三个欧洲国家的媒体语境中，移民议题的话语建构路径。本研究对德国、西班牙与比利时的9家在线报纸展开量化分析。研究团队历时两个月采集数据，构建了可整体分析的词汇数据库，也可用于观测选举前两个月内的词汇演变趋势。为开展此次量化分析，研究团队使用了TXM——一款支持大规模文本统计分析的数字化工具。通过构建词汇语料库，研究团队对研究预先选定的关键词及其高频出现的"词汇语境"进行了编码整理。通过结合三个国家既往研究的文献综述对分析结果进行对照解读，可明确移民议题在话语体系中的呈现方式。本研究旨在深化对移民如何被呈现给当地民众的认知——此类框架设定已被证实会影响选民投票倾向与整体政治格局。