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In this article we analyse the visual portrayal of Syrian refugees in the Facebook group ‘Humans of New York’ – a citizen journalism site run by a New York-based photographer. Specifically, we use narrative theory and its related method, narrative framing analysis, to examine the visual rhetoric of the European refugee crisis that emerges on this site, and the images that were most popular with the site’s viewers. Our findings indicate that while mainstream media images marginalize and dehumanize refugees by portraying them as pollutants and terrorists, alternate sites such as HONY do not function under traditional journalistic norms and routines, and provide alternate portrayals. The three narrative frames that emerge are as follows: refugees are skilled, normalized and are ideologically American. The overall narrative is a social master analogue that indicates that refugees are capable of assimilating into American life.

The question of whether press coverage of racial/ethnic minorities has improved remains. This study tackles it by examining (a) how journalists’ race/ethnicity affects campaign news coverage of race-related issues and (b) whether the nature of coverage is moderated by minority candidates and the racial composition of audiences. We pair local news coverage of 3,400 state legislative candidates with news data from 663 news outlets. We find newsroom diversity by itself does not influence the coverage of race-related issues. But in areas with large numbers of minority audiences, media outlets with diverse newsrooms are significantly more likely to cover race-related issues.

While American first ladies have long used media to craft their image, Michelle Obama is the first contemporary first lady to use social media to promote her public persona. We use the lens of symbolic convergence theory to explore the fantasy themes incumbent in images shared through Michelle Obama's Twitter account. Since first ladies have long been perceived as representing the American "everywoman," understanding the fantasies built into the social media image of the first lady extends knowledge about the perception of American women more broadly. Our findings indicate that Michelle Obama's Twitter images are strategic in that they reflect the visual themes that the media traditionally use in their coverage of first ladies. Specifically, Michelle Obama's social media messaging portrays her as an activist mother -who espouses noncontroversial causes such as education and children's health -and a nonpartisan figure with deep familial ties.