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This comparative content analysis of Belgian and Swedish newspaper coverage of the ‘refugee situation’ in 2015 (N=898) revolves around responsibility indicators, news actor characteristics, and thematic emphasis. As they are a potential influential factor in the public-opinion formation process, the studying of media portrayals is an essential first step in investigating the dynamic interplay between media discourse and societal reactions. Belgium and Sweden differ with respect to migration policy, integration indicators, and the number of incoming refugees. They also differ in terms of journalistic cultural values. As a result, they make for an excellent case study of intercultural differences and similarities in how refugees are reported on. Our analysis made clear that Belgian news coverage shows regional diversity, with Francophone Belgian journalists showing more tolerance towards migrants and thus tending to be more in line with their Swedish counterparts. Still, refugees are seldom allowed to speak for themselves. This warrants attention and action by news professionals.

Studies in Communication Science indicate that repeated exposure to media has considerable potential to shape audience attitudes to and (dis)engagement with reported issues of public interest, such as migration flows. Therefore, this study examines representation practices of refugees in right-leaning elite press narratives of French-language Belgium, the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands at the peak of the EU refugee crisis summer 2015. The discourse-analytical approach probes into the interpretative aspects of the news content by examining representation practices like collectivization/individuation of the protagonists and assignment of positive/negative semantic roles to the refugees, thereby giving/depriving them of agency and potentially enlisting readers’ compassion or creating a discourse of moral panic. To see whether the refugees have become the object of politicization, we also explore the semantic roles assigned to the three most frequently mentioned non-refugee actors common to the four newspapers (the EU, Germany and Hungary).