Representation of Refugees and Officials in U.S.-Mexico Border Crisis Newsbites: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

There has been extensive research on news discourse within the field of multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), few studies draw specifically on newsbites. This study aims to reveal how refugees and officials are presented in U.S.-Mexico border crisis newsbites, and disclose the underlying ideologies of that news actors. Following a MCDA theory, this article uses social actor and social action analysis to display how headlines and images in newsbites play a part in the recontextualization of social practice. Data contains 23 newsbites from the Google News website. The refugees and officials and their actions in newsbites have been closely examined. The results showed that the officials represented as the U.S. politicians were given a high presence of individualization and personalization, while sometimes represented in small groups. However, large groups of refugees dominated in newsbites, and migrant families and children were also displayed. The officials were usually the agent of the actions, whereas the refugees were the patient, which largely deepened the passive impression on refugees. The findings draw the implication that journalists tend to use linguistic and visual resources to leave a powerful and humanitarian figure of officials, but the stereotypes of burden, pressure, and threat of refugees to serve the ruling government.