This article explores the narrative construction of online news about the migrant crossings of the Morocco–Spain border. In particular, it analyses 54 news items that were published in two Spanish news media, elpais.com and eldiario.es, from September 2013 to May 2015. A semiotic-informed approach is proposed here to discuss how the two news media narrated the migrant border crossings and to outline how they communicated migration-related meanings and cultural values through news texts, images, videos and hyperlink contents. The results emphasise how readers can engage with online news content in different ways and through distinct although intertwined levels of reading.

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