Recent events such as the European refugee crisis or the attacks allegedly perpetrated by migrants in Cologne and several other German cities have demonstrated the significant role played by mass media in shaping the public agenda and pressuring national governments’ responses. Based on the theoretical framework of the Issue Salience theory and that of the Affective Intelligence theory, the present paper aims at investigating the relationship between the framing of migration in the media and the native population’s attitudes toward migration and migrants. Given the dynamic relationship between mainstream mass media, on one hand, and political elite decision-making and public opinion formation, on the other (Tewksbury et al. 2000; Van Dijk 1993), the paper analyzes how EU and non-EU immigration is portrayed in the media and whether the frames also mirror the native’s population attitudes. Using as case studies Italy, France and Spain, and focusing on the 2010-2012 period - characterized by intense criticism of multiculturalism - two national daily newspapers for each country have been selected: Le Figaro and Le Monde in France, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica in Italy and El Mundo, respectively El Pais in Spain. By using as unit of analysis the articles related to immigrants or migration from these main national newspapers (in terms of printing number) a total of 4329 articles are coded and analysed with qualitative content analysis. In a second step of the analysis, multivariate models will be run on the European Social Survey data from 2010 and 2014. The paper identifies the content of the dominant media frames that emerge (work/labour market, welfare, social cohesion/integration, criminality and, last but not least, discrimination) and tests them against the attitudinal data measured through three composite threat indicators: cultural, economic and social.
