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Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room C321, 68 University Ave., Kingston ON, K7L 3N6, email: [email protected]
Introduction
Since the outbreak of war in 2011, coverage of conflict in Syria has inundated Canadian news networks with depictions of chaos and depravity. The escalation of violence and subsequent mass displacement of Syrian people has raised many questions regarding Canada's response to the conflict, particularly pertaining to intervention, foreign aid and resettlement. As a hotly contested topic, predominantly during the 2015 federal election, the unrest in Syria fueled considerable debate within government and among the public regarding Canada's response to a country in crisis.
This article examines the framing of the Syrian refugee crisis in Canadian print media from January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2016, in eight English language major dailies. Using automated coding and cluster analyses, this project assesses how Canadian newspapers framed the conflict and resettlement of refugees in Canada,1 finding that the coverage shifts from conflict-dominated representations of the Syrian people to more humanizing depictions of refugees’ families and the services provided them following the release of the photo of three-year-old Alan Kurdi's body and the subsequent focus on refugee resettlement in the election and post-election periods.
Media framing is broadly understood as the selection of “some aspects of a perceived reality to make them more salient in a communicating text in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993: 52). Effectively, frames communicate, implicitly or explicitly, specific interpretations regarding causes and solutions to issues in the news. In the case of the Syrian refugee crisis, frames that emphasize security concerns or humanitarian considerations may shape readers’ opinions of the resettlement efforts and their thoughts on how Canada ought to respond to the conflict. As such, to gain a better understanding of how Canadians formulate their opinions on Syrian newcomers, it is important to examine the lenses that are used to discuss and evaluate the crisis in Canadian news media.
In addition to understanding the frames that are used in the coverage of the crisis, it is also important to assess if and how the frames change over the course of the conflict and resettlement...