Do media systems matter? A comparative study of editorials on the migration crisis in the UK, German and Greek traditional press

Abstract

This study compares the editorial coverage of the 2015 migration crisis in major centre-left and centre-right newspapers in three European countries affected (the UK, Germany and Greece). We test the empirical validity of the ‘national media-system’ hypothesis, and in particular the hypothesised characteristics of the different media systems these countries represent through a systematic content analysis of all editorials referring to the issue of migration/asylum for the period 2015–2016. For the purposes of data collection, we develop an original coding scheme that combines concepts and categories from the extant literature on media systems, as well as the literature on migration-related news frames. Our findings largely confirm the relevance of media-system characteristics in the coverage of the crisis, although UK editorials are markedly more polarised than expected. We also find that there was no consensus-based editorial coverage in the initial phase of the crisis.