Picturing Refugees in Western Media: A Comparative Study of Middle Eastern and European Refugees on Twitter

By focusing on the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis compared to the 2022 refugee crisis from Ukraine, this study examined how Western media visually portrayed Middle Eastern versus European refugees on social media. Drawing on the current literature and guided by visual framing theory, a total of 1,590 visual tweets of forcibly displaced Middle Easterners and Europeans were analyzed. Results suggest differences in the denotative, stylistic, and connotative representations between the two groups. Significant differences emerged across variables, including scene, facial expressions, camera shot, and the dominant frame. Overall, our investigation into this area expands the comparative visual literature on social media portrayal of crises and exposes discrepancies in pictorial representations of refugees in Western media based on geographical and temporal contexts.