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This study explores the country-specific, regional and cultural differences and similarities between China and two European countries in their coverage of the European refugee issue and seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the various political interests, social values, and journalism cultures in the countries under study. It analyzed and compared 2,368 news articles in Belgian, Swedish, and Chinese newspapers from 2015 to 2017. The analysis demonstrated that Chinese newspapers put less emphasis on welcoming the refugees by politicians and citizens, but are more prone to report on Islamic religion in their coverage of the refugees than the Belgian and Swedish newspapers. The empirical evidence suggests that the differences in reporting are not only a representation of different political interests and social engagement of the three countries, but, to a large extent, a result of different journalism cultures across nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the agenda-setting and framing literature, this quantitative content analysis examines how le Figaro, the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times, and the Moscow Times covered the Syrian war before and after the chemical weapon attack of 21 August 2013. Overall, the nationalization frame was most frequent, followed by the responsibility and conflict frames. Despite the large impact of the conflict, the morality, human interest, and economic impact frames were hardly present. Although all newspapers followed a similar pattern, the Daily Telegraph was the most heavily framed. Moreover, the stories barely provided any context while discussing several solutions largely in keeping with the suggestions of the governments. These findings raise questions about the neutrality of the newspapers and their impact on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the mainstream media coverage on Germany’s integration debate between 2009 and 2014, while detecting main debate actors, topics, discourses, key events and their relations to one another. Media representations of Muslims, integration, immigration, multiculturalism and creation of otherness are scrutinized, considering different political alignments of mainstream newspapers. Furthermore, the Sarrazin debate is contextualized within recent events such as right-wing populism and anti-Islamization movements. A quantitative content analysis revealed pragmatism and culturalism as the leading discourses in one-third of all left and right leaning newspapers, while integration, immigration and populist language in politics were the most discussed topics. Mainly, events and actors related to the Sarrazin debate were mentioned. We argue that the Sarrazin debate has encouraged a variety of actors to speak out in favor or against Muslims. Our findings suggest a personal network analysis combined with qualitative research, in order to identify more actors, ties and network alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]