Strangers in a strange land: visualizing Syrian refugees in U.S., Canadian, and Lebanese newspapers

Abstract

Although news photographs of refugees are often perceived as objective representations of reality, they are actually the product of subjective decisions made by photographers and editors. These subjective realities are reinforced by captions when they are published in newspapers. Using a quantitative content analysis method, this study aims to understand how Syrian refugees were framed visually and lexically in the online editions of national newspapers from the United States, Canada and Lebanon from 1 September 2015 to 31 March 2017. Photographs, accompanying captions and headlines were collected from the New York Times (United States), the Globe and Mail (Canada) and Annahar (Lebanon). Eighteen variables were designed and adapted from previous research to code the sample. The results of this study complement previous research on framing of the current refugee crisis, much of which focuses on European newspapers. This paper provides valuable insight into how representation of Syrian refugees in Anglophonic newspapers compares to that of Lebanese newspapers.