Group Threat in the News: a Comparative Study of the Expression of Group Threat and Media Framing in European Union Immigration News Stories.

Abstract

The member nations of the Europe Union (EU) faced a dilemma born of troubling economic times during the years between 2000 and 2012. The political turmoil currently plaguing the continent created an environment rife with nationalism and rejection of EU sovereignty over national affairs, specifically immigration. Ironically, The EU needed immigration to grow its stagnant populations and to contribute to its national and supranational economies. Fueled by these dilemmas, the citizens of member–nations increasingly expressed anti-immigrant sentiment. As media is reflective of public sentiment, this dissertation examines whether media coverage of immigration news reflected group-threat sentiment expressed by citizens and consequently, anti-immigrant sentiment, through the theoretical lens of group-threat theory. The data reveled that media expressed and reported expressions of group threat sentiment, operationalized as ethnocentrism and nationalism, with some concurrence of reports of economic downturn and migrant population growth. This research also revealed that expressions of group threat also concurred with established immigration news frames and with particular news topics such as terrorism and references to Islam. Expressions of group-threat sentiment did not increase in conjunction with coverage of events significant in European Union history. Future research should be directed towards the examination of group threat as expressed in ethnic minority media and via the usage of new media.