Coverage of migration in the media intensified during
2015 against the backdrop of a largescale European refugee crisis. Using a
combination of methods associated with corpus linguistics and critical
discourse analysis, this paper explores the representation of refugees, asylum
seekers, immigrants and migrants over a three month period, from September to
November 2015, in UK and Irish newspapers. Data was collected from Nexis, using the Baker et al. (2008)
RASIM framework. Using corpus linguistic tools, we identify how these groups
are represented, before drawing on CDA to examine the data sets in more detail.
To do this, frequency lists of the UK and Irish corpora were compared across
variety followed by a more detailed diachronic analysis of the most frequently
occurring items. The extent to which the
issue of migration is refracted through a discourse of terrorism in Irish and
UK coverage is compared through cluster analyses and a close CDA analysis of randomised
down samples of the Irish and UK sub-corpora drawing in particular on the DHA
approach.