What shapes the coverage of immigration

Immigration is a dramatic challenge for Europe: the press has a large influence in determining the opinion climate at this regard. This article investigates how a selection of newspapers in Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy covers the immigration issue from 1 January 2013 to 30 April 2014, before and after the Lampedusa shipwreck on 3 October 2013. Departing from the hypothesis that the media ownership may have a large influence on the content of the news, we investigate 12 different media companies in conjunction with other variables that may affect the coverage of the topic as well. A quantitative content analysis has been first used to derive information from a collection of 2602 articles retrieved through a set of specific keywords from different online database. Afterward, a Multiple Correspondence Analysis has been performed to explore and synthetize the collected information into a small number of ‘factors’.