Project members Jan Fredrik Hovden, Hilmar Mjelde and project director Jostein Gripsrud recently published the article “The Syrian refugee crisis in Scandinavian newspapers” in The European Journal of Communications Research, and is featured in today’s Aftenposten with a summary of the study’s findings.
The article demonstrates internal trends in the Scandinavian countries’ immigration debates in a European context, using the newspaper coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015 as case.
Some of the main findings is that refugees from Syria at first were covered as victims of a humanitarian catastrophy, with an increase in secutiry threat frames over the latter half of the year. Of the three countries, Danish press was the most critical to the refugees, Swedish press was the most positive. Norway is located in the middle.
The findings seem to be consistent with differences in immigration policies, public discourses and media structure within the three counties. It should be noted that more research is required to survey the development over time (1970-2016). SCANPUB encourage our colleagues to undertake similar historical-comparative research on the topic.