Keywords
Immigration, DACA, U.S news media, American journalism, President Obama, President Trump
Disciplines
Law and Politics
Mentor
Dr. Ericka King
Abstract
This paper investigates how Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has been depicted in the U.S specifically by examining the media’s coverage of immigration during the Obama and Trump presidencies in two elite newspapers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal between June 2012 (when DACA was signed into law) and October 2017 (9 months into Trump’s presidential term).
The findings from the analysis indicate that the tone of the newspapers’ coverage of DACA was both negative and conflict oriented. The news articles were consistently unfavorable; out of a total of 170 articles analyzed and examined, 53.83% were negatively toned compared to only 14.93% that were positively toned and 31.24% that were neutral.
The content of the news articles on eight major themes: conflict, human rights, fear, American dream, business and technology, personalization, economy, and security. The findings from the analysis indicate that conflict was the most utilized theme. Out of a total of a total of 170 articles analyzed, 94.71% used conflict as a prominent narrative.
ScholarWorks Citation
Paniagua-Pardo, Estefany, "New York Times’ and Wall Street Journal’s Coverage of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): A Content Analysis" (2018). Honors Projects. 680.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/honorsprojects/680
