More than Human Tragedy? A Quantitative Comparison of Newspaper Coverage on Irregular Migration and Lampedusa in Five European Countries

This quantitative, international, comparative content analysis of news coverage on irregular migration and Lampedusa covering the period 2009-2013 addresses the differences in quantity and content elements of newspaper articles on this subject in five countries: Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium (Flanders), Germany and the UK (N=522). The main research question of this study addresses how news media coverage of irregular migration and Lampedusa differs in terms of issue attention, different voices, level of domestication, problem definitions, causal attributions, and solutions. Results show that news coverage is quite extensive around Europe, but largely concentrated around certain peak periods of attention, especially in 2011. While most of this coverage is about the humanitarian drama unfolding in the Mediterranean, we argue that extensive and continuous coverage of the issue also opens up possibilities (or even needs) for news media to cover a broader variety of different content elements. Our results demonstrate that links between irregular migration arrivals to Lampedusa and the home country of the newspapers in our sample are limited, and although the EU is barely mentioned as either a part or a cause of the problem, it was often looked to for solutions.