The document summarizes research on how Italian mass media frames and represents mass migration. It finds that media coverage tends to focus on two dominant frames: 1) an "alarm frame" that depicts migration as an invasion and security threat, using metaphors like "human tsunami" and focusing on arrivals and landings. 2) A "pietism frame" that depicts migrants as passive victims in need of help but still defines migration as an emergency. Overall, the research shows Italian media provides an exaggerated and static picture of migration that focuses overwhelmingly on crime stories and emergencies rather than a holistic picture of the phenomenon.

1. Mass media and immigration. Framing, social construction of reality and social problem
Population, Migrations and Development : Beyond Borders
Representing (and marking) the borders. Italian media and migrations
Marco Binotto and Marco Bruno - Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Communication and Social Research
Internal borders:
migration and the securitarian issue
External borders:
“Lampedusa” as Emergency Frame on
migration in Italian media
A blown up snapshot is a photographic caricature, an
exaggeration, a change in the shapes and dimensions of a
representation to highlight it and to emphasize an aspect of it.
That is what happens to the image of immigration. To begin
with, for the most part, it deals with a picture, a shot that’s
been fixed for thirty years now of a phenomenon that has
been in perpetual motion. The media seems to content itself
with this static and apparently unchanging image. It has
chosen a detail, an aspect to magnify and exaggerate. That
is the dark side that is present in every human phenomenon
– it is problematic and related to the language of crime, to
emotions of pain, to fears of invasion and of degradation.
The “blown up” snap shot in question is that of immigration
and of foreign presence in Italy, and it focuses on
emergency, safety and a naturally problematic vision of the
phenomenon. This very briefly summarizes some of the
more important evidence that came out of the surveys that is
presented here on the representative mechanisms of the
migratory phenomenon in the Italian mass-media, especially
information media.
Only 26 stories
without crime or security issues
2008 Tv stories on immigration issue (not linked to crime report
or security issues) on total stories (six months)
Only crime news: 25 years of media coverage of migrations
RESEARCH
EXTRACOMUNITARI
(MARLETTI 1991)
FUORILUOGO
(BINOTTO, MARTINO 2004)
MEDIA E IMMIGRAZIONE TRA
STEREOTIPI E PREGIUDIZI
(CALVANESE 2011)
OSSERVATORIO CARTA DI ROMA
AGENDA
NOTIZIE FUORI DAL GHETTO
(AA.VV. 2013)
TIME 1982-1990 12/2002- 3/2003 2005 – 2008 2010 2012
SECTION % ISSUE % ISSUE % FIRST PAGE ISSUES % FIRST PAGE ISSUES %
RESULTS
CRIME NEWS 37 CRIME NEWS AND TERRORISM 40,4 TRIALS 58,8
NEWS REPORTS (DESCRIPTION,
JUDICIAL OR INVESTIGATION
STORIES, SCENARIO…)
52,4 BLACK NEWS 38,9
FIRST PAGE 5 ARRIVALS AND DISEMBARKMENTS 16,0
ARRIVALS, DISEMBARKMENTS,
SEA DISASTERS, PUSHBACKS
1,4 MIGRATION FLOODS 20,2
INTERIORS 20 POLITICAL OR THEME DEBATE 19,6 ADMNISTRATIVE 21,5
TRATTAMENTO TEMATICO
(IMMIGRATION / SECURITY)
13,0 LEGISLATION 19,3
ABROAD 22 ECONOMICS, OCCUPATION AND EALTH 11,2 WELFARE 19,7
DESCRIPTION, ENQUIRY,
NARRATION OR STORY, CULTURE
6,1 SOCIETY 22,4
THIRD 5 CULTURE, RELIGION AND INTEGRATION 9,2 CULTURE 13,6
SHOWS 4 OTHER 3,6 RACISM 12,5
SPORTS 4
SPECIAL ISSUES 3
With crime news stories, the theme of landings on the Italian coast - and more generally of the dimension of
immigrants’ entries - is one of the most characteristic elements of the entire media representation of the
phenomenon of migration. As previously emphasized (Bruno 2004, p. 95), the landing often becomes an iconic
media image of the phenomenon of migration. The representation of migration given by the Italian media is strictly
visual and the vocabulary used has a symbolic value both in lexical and textual terms.
Landings as a “media-icon” of immigration
FRAMING DEVICES FRAME OF ALARM FRAME OF PIETISM (MINORITY)
DEPICTION / LABELS
CLANDESTINES.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
DESPERATE.
MIGRANTS.
ROLE OF SUBJECTS ACTIVE. PASSIVE. VICTIMS.
METAPHORS AND CATCHPHRASES
HUMAN TSUNAMI. MAXI LANDING. WAVE
OF MIGRATION.
MEDITERRANEAN CEMETERY
EXEMPLARS “LAST YEAR’S LANDINGS AND CHAOS”.
ITALIAN EMIGRATION IN THE PAST.
PREVIOUS INCIDENTS AT SEA.
VISUAL IMAGES
YOUNG MEN. LAW ENFORCEMENT
OFFICERS, MILITARY FORCES.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN. RESCUERS.
BOATS.
DEFINITION OF THE ISSUE
INVASION. UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION.
EMERGENCY LANDINGS.
HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY.
FLIGHT OF REFUGEES FROM WAR
AND MISERY.
ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY
LAXITY AND FEW CONTROLS. LACK OF
ACTION FROM EUROPE.
WESTERN COUNTRIES. MIGRANT
SMUGGLERS.
The attempts to summarise the two frames
identified by the iconic and discursive
representative elements that constitute
and support them. It is important to
emphasize that, even if presented next to
each other, the two frames, unlike other
similar empirical acquisitions (i.e. Van
Gorp 2005), do not have the same weight
and the same representative power.
Arrivals from nowhere:
the coverage of Italians media
are focused on domestic events
There is no immigration without crime. The news reports - especially crime and
judicial news - overcome the account of migrations and foreign presence. Our
research aims to verify whether this representation is due either to the
newsworthy facts or to foreign persons’ behaviour, or it can be attributed to the
newsrooms’ selection. The results, obtained comparing this picture with the rest
of the crime news in the newspapers analysed, show a difference of treatment
both in the amount and visibility of the news and in the kind of facts or details
published. The news media confirm to be a faithless "mirror" of social
phenomena.
Black mirror:Different pages for
different people
An ethical-professional matter in journalism
The stories on migrants constantly appear to be on the fence between the obligation of the
news and respect for privacy. A tendency to diffuse information and images prejudicial to
the dignity of persons involved is witnessed, directly or indirectly in news items especially
when the main characters are migrants. The behaviour of the two sources of media
analyzed do not appear homogenous: news programs on Tv more often represent the
images of migrants involved in news items, while newspapers give space to information on
victims and family relations without avoiding the consideration of minors.
PRESENCE OF IMAGES OR INFOR-
MATIONS
TV NEWS
TV NEWS STORY WITH FOREIGN-
ER PERSONS AS PROTAGONIST
PRESS
PRESS STORY WITH FOREIGNER PER-
SONS AS PROTAGONIST
Yes, adult
29,7% 39,9% 34,7% 35,5%
Sì, minor
2% - 0,8% 1,3%
No
68,3% 60,1% 64,5% 63,2%
Total
100,0% 100,0% 100,0% 100,0%
AA.VV., Associazione Carta di Roma. Notizie fuori dal ghetto. Primo Rapporto annuale. Roma: Ponte Sisto, 2013. // Marinella, Belluati. Lampedusa 3 ottobre 2013. Cronaca di una tragedia. In AA.VV., Associazione Carta di Roma. Notizie alla deriva. Secondo Rapporto annuale, 63-78. Roma: Ponte Sisto, 2014. // Berger, Peter L., Luckmann, Thomas. The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1966. // Binotto, Marco. “Invaders, Aliens and Criminals. Metaphors and Spaces in the Media Definition of Migration and Security Policies”.
In, Destination Italy: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative, edited by Emma Bond, Guido Bonsaver, Federico Faloppa. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015. // Binotto, Marco. “Tracciare confini. Metafore, frame e spazi nella definizione del nemico”. In: Tracciare confini. L’immigrazione e i media italiani, edited by Marco Binotto, Marco Bruno, and Valeria Lai. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2015 - in press. // Binotto, Marco, and Martino, Valentina, eds. Fuoriluogo. L’immigrazione e i media italiani. Cosenza: Rai-Pellegrini, 2004. //
Binotto, Marco, Bruno, Marco, and Lai, Valeria, eds. Gigantografie in nero. Ricerca su sicurezza, immigrazione e asilo nei media italiani. Raleigh NC: Lulu Press, 2012.. // Binotto, Marco, Bruno, Marco, and Lai, Valeria, eds. Tracciare confini. L’immigrazione e i media italiani. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2015 - in press. // Bruno, Marco. “L’ennesimo sbarco di clandestini”. In: Fuoriluogo. L’immigrazione e i media italiani, edited by Marco Binotto, and Valentina Martino, 95-107. Cosenza: Rai-Pellegrini, 2004. // Bruno, Marco. Cornici di realtà. Il frame nell’analisi
dell’informazione. Milano: Guerini e Associati, 2014. // Calvanese, Ernesto. Media e immigrazione tra stereotipi e pregiudizi. La rappresentazione dello straniero nel racconto giornalistico. Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2011. // Cohen, Stanley, and Young Jock, eds. The manufacture of news. Social problems, deviance and the mass media (Revised edition). London: Constable-Sage, 1981. // Entman, Robert M. “Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm”, Journal of Communication 43, 4 (1993): 51-58. // Gamson, William A. Talking politics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992. // Marletti, Carlo (eds). Extracomunitari. Dall’immaginario collettivo al vissuto quotidiano del razzismo. Torino: Eri Rai-Vqpt, , 1991. // Van Gorp, Baldwin, “Where is the frame? Victims and intruders in the belgian press coverage of the asylum issue”, European Journal of Communication 20, 4 (2005): 484-507.
References
The identification and deconstruction of prevalent frames in news representations allows to highlight the central role of the media in the definition of the situation and
in the construction of the immigration in Italy as “social problem”. The news-frame analysis approach (Entman 1993; Bruno 2014) allows to point out how visual
images, lexical and argumentative constructs, metaphors, etc. are “framing devices” (Gamson 1992) that contribute to establish, structure and enhance the
discourse on the Other, not only as a set of messages, but as a dynamic and potentially conflictual (sometimes consensual) field of representations and forces that
push to a specific definition and construction of reality Berger, Luckmann 1966).
A dark blown up snapshot
Arrestati due marocchini e un tunisino
Dai campi di Latina a venditori di morte
La Stampa, 19 settembre 1992 (Cronaca di Torino)
Fermeremo i clandestini
basta con gli allarmi inutili
La Repubblica, Livia Turco, 12 agosto 1998
Tragedia nel canale di Sicilia. Si contano
i cadaveri.
Recuperati i corpi di 14clandestini, e si cerca
La Stampa, 18 luglio 2007
Arrestati tre albanesi.
Rumeno dietro le sbarre per una rapina a Rimini.
La Repubblica, 14 gennaio 2003, Il Tempo, 19 gennaio
Cocaina sequestrata per un valore complessivo di
oltre trentamila euro e due marocchini arrestati.
22 ottobre 2011 (Cronaca di Savona)
Libero, 2008 April 20, cover
Theme of news reports (year 2008, %, sum 780 press news, 276 tv news).
Use of nationality label in headlines
Geographical area of Newspapers’ main title (year 2010)
The Invasion Frame vs The Pietistic Frame
Since 2002, at Department of Communication and So-
cial Research – Sapienza University of Rome (CoRiS)
a team of researcher and scholar is involved on study
of representations of diversity and immigration on
mass media. In a network of ten Italian Universities the
Coris Research Unit on Media and Immigration
participated, since 2007, to the Observatory activities
of “Carta di Roma” (“Journalist’s code of conduct
regarding asylum seekers, refugees, victims of
trafficking and migrants”: www.cartadiroma.org).
Among main publications by the Coris Research Unit
on Media and Immigration:
Binotto Marco, and Martino
Valentina, eds. Fuoriluogo.
L’immigrazione e i media
italiani.
Cosenza: RaiPellegrini,2004.
Binotto Marco, Bruno Marco,
and Lai Valeria.
eds. Gigantografie in nero.
Ricerca su sicurezza, immi-
grazione e asilo nei media
italiani. Raleigh NC: Lulu
Press, 2012.
“Fuori dall’emergenza.
Immagini delle migrazioni
nel racconto dei media“,
ComunicazionePuntoDoc”
no. 9 – feb, 2014.
News or images that might identify persons guilty or suspect in violence crimes
Theme of news reports (year 2008, %, sum 780 press news, 276 tv news).
Themes of news reports in different surveys on Italian newspapers.
Italy
87%
World
13%