Various phases of migration triggered mass communication scholars to study the contents of media coverage about the topic. A variety of content analyses have been conducted to find out how journalists report about migrants and refugees. Of course, the results are highly dependent on the respective national and historic contexts of migration flows and debates. For example, there is evidence that leading African newspapers report much less about migration than their European counterparts, even though many African countries are both countries of origin and destination for migrants and refugees. Yet, even within Europe the degree of attention to, as well as the framing of the issue, varies significantly, as a recent comparative study by the European Journalism Observatory (EJO) and Otto Brenner Stiftung has shown. The study reveals differences in the quantity and quality of coverage not only between Western and Central Eastern Europe, but also within Western Europe. Also, research has shown that different communities of migrants are depicted differently by the same media. Within the European Union (EU), for example, news media may depict migration from outside the EU more negatively and with a focus on security, as suggested by a recent study in seven EU countries.
In recent studies in the context of the so-called European “refugee crisis”, it has often been diagnosed that the media focus on elitist actors rather than giving voice to migrants and refugees themselves. Elitist actors may include national and international politicians, state authorities and international actors such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). By contrast, several studies have diagnosed that migrants and refugees are depicted as anonymous groups rather than as individuals with agency. Moreover, there seems to be a tendency for media coverage of the issue to be dominated by day-to-day politics and particular moments of crisis, rather than by a constant monitoring and providing of the relevant background information audiences need to assess issues pertaining to migrants and refugees. As a general tendency, it seems that political debates and political actors are rather overrepresented in the media coverage of migration and forced displacement. This may come at the expense of coverage of relevant economic, cultural, or historical background factors. Content analyses also suggest that journalists rarely differentiate between the different terminologies concerning migrants and refugees. Refugees with their respective rights under the Geneva Convention seem to be confounded with other migrants. In a 2015 report, the Ethical Journalism Network recommended the news media appoint specialist reporters focussing on migration to improve the quality of coverage.
