Refugee depictions in Dutch Internet news

Abstract

Much has been written about the depiction of refugees in newspapers and television news, yet far less is known about how refugees are portrayed in Internet news. In this era of increasing Internet use, it is important to also study how refugees are depicted by Internet news websites. We used a quantitative coding sheet to investigate how Dutch news websites covered refugees. Our research found, first, that Dutch Internet news reports rather positively about refugees. This finding is directly linked to a conceptual decision, however, as we categorized references to victimization as positive coverage of refugees. Second, we found no significant difference between commercial and public Internet news sources in their depiction of refugees. Finally, we found a tendency towards depersonalization of refugees across all of the Dutch Internet news sources examined, which is reflected in the more frequent use of thematic over episodic frames.