Refugees, migrants and displaced people in the South border. Comparative study of the journalistic treatment in seven countries of the European Union

Abstract

The article studies the media portrayal of people in movement (refugees, migrants and displaced persons) in seven countries of the southern border of the European Union in 2015 and 2016, a period during which the migratory flow increased due to a change in the routes. The purpose of this research is to compare how the media in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Italy, Poland and Spain have treated the largest flow of people arrived at Europe since the Second World War. For this purpose, 749 journalistic pieces have been content-analysed. Results show clear deficiencies in the information treatment on migration and refuge in the selected media, with poor contextualization and an irregular attention to this kind of issues.