The dynamics of liberal media discourse on the Middle Eastern migration crises: the case of Gazeta Wyborcza in 2015 and 2021

Abstract

The thesis examines the newspaper coverage of Middle Eastern migration to Poland and the European Union in the years 2015 and 2021. The case study explains how the liberal-democratic Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza framed the 2015 refugee crisis from the Middle East and the 2021 border dispute between Poland and Belarus in its online and in-print archived publications. The study traces the evolution of Gazeta Wyborcza`s migration framing using the mixed-method research design. The frame analysis based on R. Entman (1993) and D. Snow and R. Benford (1988) supplements the R-based unigram and bigram generation. The study revealed the predominance of humanitarian and guest frames in newspaper discursive constructions. Meanwhile, the discrepancies in immigration coverage stemmed from such contextual factors as proximity and crisis responsibility attribution. While the 2015 crisis coverage focused on war-led emigration from the country of origin, the 2021 border crisis description prioritised the hybrid warfare of Belarus against Poland.