Migration Discourse in Sweden: Frames and Sentiments in Mainstream and Social Media

Abstract

<p>This study makes a systematic analysis of media discourse on migration in Sweden in 2012-2019. Using a novel dataset consisting of mainstream newspapers, Twitter and forum data, the article answers two questions: what do Swedish media actually talk about when they talk about “migration”? And how do they talk about it? Using a combination of computational text analysis tools, I analyse a shift in the media discourse as one of the outcomes of the so-called “European refugee crisis” in 2015 and try to comprehend the role of social media in this process. The results of the study provide some evidence for a populist and hostile character of the migration framing and indicate that the messages on social media, generally, had negative tonality. At the same time, the analysis of framing and sentiment dynamics suggests that a statement about the discourse shift in the Swedish media during the “European refugee crisis” is to some extent over-estimated. Rather, one can suggest that the role of the “crisis” should be viewed in a broader political and historical context.</p>

Discursive construction of migrant otherness on Facebook: A distributional semantics approach

“…Summing up the results of the analysis outlined in the previous section, it seems that the thematic structure of the Facebook discourse has many commonalities with the discourses on other social media platforms and resources, such as Twitter and Flashback forum [46]. Indeed, some of the discourse themes, such as financial aspects, racism or migrant illegality, are echoed by the social media users across these media resources and seem to act as general ways to frame the immigration agenda in Sweden.…”

Discursive construction of migrant otherness on Facebook: A distributional semantics approach

“…Summing up the results of the analysis outlined in the previous section, it seems that the interpretative repertoire used to contextualise the immigration topic on Facebook has many commonalities with the repertoires of other social media platforms and resources, such as Twitter and Flashback forum (Yantseva, 2020). Indeed, some of the themes, such as financial aspects, racism or migrant illegality, are echoed by the social media users across these media resources and seem to act as general ways to frame and contextualise the immigration agenda in Sweden.…”