Media Coverage of Refugee Transit Through the Republic of Croatia

Sa？etak The objective of this investigation was to determine the extent and nature of the coverage by three Croatian daily newspapers, Jutarnji list, Ve？ernji list and 24sata, regarding the wave of refugees and refugee transit through the Republic of Croatia from September 2015 to April 2017. The initial hypothesis was that the coverage of the refugees was sensationalistic, and that refugees, immigrants and migrants were being portrayed as detrimental to the country’s economic stability and potential terrorism threats, while newspaper articles were appealing to readers’ emotions. We also examined the nature of the reporting, journalists’ attitudes, eventual stereotyping of refugees, as well as possible violations of the ethical norms of journalism. The relationship between the headlines and texts was subjected to particular scrutiny. In the final section, we present our results and an analysis of the empirical findings. In the conclusion, we stress the importance of correlating our results with those other recent studies, especially investigations focusing upon social networking sites and the false information spread by such sites on the issue of refugees and migrants