News Media Trends in the Framing of Immigration and Crime, 1990–2013
News Media Trends in the Framing of Immigration and Crime, 1990–2013
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1990-2013 年移民和犯罪框架的新闻媒体趋势
DOI：
10.1093/socpro/spz024
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发表时间：
2019
期刊：
影响因子：
3.2
通讯作者：
Jeff Gruenewald
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
C. Harris;Jeff Gruenewald
很少有社会问题能像所谓的移民与犯罪之间的联系那样引起如此多的公众和政治辩论。与许多实证文献的发现相反，大多数公众认为移民会增加犯罪，而且外国出生的人特别容易犯罪。在众多因素中，著名新闻媒体描述移民与犯罪联系的方式可能有助于解释过去几十年来学术和公众舆论的脱节。当前的研究使用从 1990 年至 2013 年发行量最高的全国报纸中提取的 2,200 多个新闻报道的独特数据库，采用时间序列趋势分析来检查用于解释移民与犯罪联系的不同媒体框架的流行程度，以及这些框架是否随着时间的推移而发生系统性变化。我们的研究结果显示，大多数移民犯罪新闻报道都将移民描述为特别容易犯罪或总体犯罪率不断上升。此外，随着时间的推移，这种框架越来越普遍，将无证移民本身不准确地描述为犯罪的叙述也越来越普遍，而将移民框架为犯罪受害者的说法在 1990 年至 2013 年期间显着减少。这些变化仅在一些报纸上系统地发生。我们讨论科学证据对研究、政策和公众参与的影响。
Few social problems engender as much public and political debate as the alleged link between immigration and crime. Contrary to the findings of much empirical literature, the majority of the public believe that immigration increases crime and that the foreign born are especially prone to offending. Among many factors, the way prominent news media describe the immigration-crime link may help explain the disconnectedness of scholarship and public opinion over the past several decades. Using a unique database of over 2,200 news stories drawn from among the highest circulation national papers for 1990 through 2013, the current study employs time-series trend analyses to examine the prevalence of different media frames used to explain the immigration-crime link and whether those frames have changed systematically over time. Our results reveal that most immigration-crime news stories describe immigrants as especially crime-prone or as increasing aggregate crime rates. Moreover, this framing has increased in prevalence over time, as have narratives inaccurately describing undocumented immigration as a crime itself, while framing immigrants as victims of crime has declined significantly over the 1990–2013 period. These changes occurred systematically in only some newspapers. We discuss implications for research, policy, and the public engagement of scientific evidence.