The Language of Immigration Coverage: The Arizona Republic and Media’s Role in the Production of Social Illegality

Recently, several mainstream media organizations have moved away from using “illegal immigrant” in their immigration coverage. While this shift in immigration coverage is positive, seemingly positive language may still be exclusionary, particularly if the content of stories remains the same. We investigate whether newspaper articles that describe immigrants as “illegal” are more negative in content than articles that present immigrants as “undocumented” by analyzing 1,616 newspaper articles and letters to the editor in The Arizona Republic between 2000 and 2016, a critical period of immigration legislative activity in Arizona. We find that The Arizona Republic inundated readers with negative news coverage and that this coverage is baked into the content of stories and transcends the use of either term, “illegal” or “undocumented.” We then draw on letters to the editor and original interview data to consider how social forces outside of the media may influence coverage.

News stories framed episodically offer more diversified portrayals of immigrants

This study investigated the representations of immigrants emerging from frames used in news stories in the two largest-circulation daily newspapers in Arizona: The Arizona Republic and the Arizona Daily Star. A quantitative content analysis of 380 stories published in the two dailies’ websites in 2013 found the news coverage of immigration generally unfavorable to immigrants. Stories framed episodically provided less negative representations of immigrants than stories framed thematically did. Journalists interested in producing more diversified coverage of immigration should consider writing more stories using a predominantly episodic frame.