Emotion and Narrative Construction: An Analysis of UK Mainstream Media Coverage of Refugee Policies

This study examines how UK newspapers The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph construct refugee policy discourse on Homes for Ukraine and the Rwanda Plan in 840 articles published between March 2022 and January 2025. Using VADER, BERTopic, and qualitative narrative analysis, it examines sentiment polarity, topic salience, and narrative organization across policy cases and newspapers. Coverage of Homes for Ukraine had a higher share of positive sentiment than coverage of the Rwanda Plan; descriptively, policy differences exceeded outlet differences. Their narratives centered on government responsibility, partisan competition and policy legitimacy, and humanitarian obligation and differentiated constructions of refugee deservingness.