The crisis in Ukraine was one of the dominant topics in international news coverage of 2014 and the following years. Representing a conflict along the lines of an East-Western confrontation unprecedented since the end of the Cold War, the news reporting in different European countries with different historical backgrounds is an essential research topic. This article presents findings of a content analysis examining coverage of the conflict in the first half of 2014 in newspapers from a diverse set of 13 countries: Albania, Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as Ukraine and Russia. Drawing on prior literature on news values, key events, and news cycles in foreign coverage, this study maps the evolution of the conflict in the course of four key events and identifies specific characteristics of the coverage in different newspapers. The results show that attention for the conflict varies considerably across the countries, which might be traced back to different degrees of geographical and cultural proximity, domestication, and economic exchange, as well as lack of editorial resources especially in Eastern Europe. Russia dominated the news agenda in all newspapers under study with a constant stream of conflict news. Contradicting prior literature, media sought to contextualise the events, and meta-coverage of the media’s role in the crisis emerged as a relevant topic in many countries with a developed media system.

Immigration emerges as a relevant topic in the analysis of media coverage. This case of study identifies that the media coverage adopted a more predominantly political frame rather than a social or human frame. Also, there were significant differences between the presence of migrant and non-migrant news sources, while non-migrant speakers were not judgmental regarding migration. Likewise, news framing influences the selection of news coverage. The political frame over-represented the political actors and international institutions and under-represented migrants. Nevertheless, when it comes to the human-interest angle, migrants are the most common sources. Our results contribute to the literature regarding the description of the issue of immigration focused on the information sources.

Six years after the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015, the European Union remains divided on questions of migration and asylum policy. The issue also remains high on the agendas of the USA and Russia, two other key destination countries with immigration from Latin America and the Post-Soviet space. This article presents results from a comparative study of news coverage in 17 countries, focusing on 10 EU member states in Western and Central Eastern Europe (CEE), the USA and Russia. The intensity of coverage was remarkably different, with Hungary’s and Germany’s media standing out while Russian media displayed relatively low levels of coverage. Individual migrants and refugees were most visible in the two outlets from the USA. Media in CEE countries tended towards a more critical approach than media in Western Europe. However, differences between most countries’ pairs of analyzed media outlets indicate a more pluralistic debate than frequently assumed.

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